St Lawrence County

St Lawrence County, NY, Old Hemlocks Found	Bradley Burns
	Nov 17, 2004 06:34 PST

I am new to this list but I have been hunting for old growth trees for
years. I have located many examples and wanted some expertise from the
group on old hemlocks. I located several that are about 9ft cbh with
being dead and several snags. Trees are located about 20 mins south of
St. Lawrence river in St. Lawrence county. One doesn't see the number
of old trees I found in this region outside of Adir. Park. Also on this
property is about 3 dozen ancient trees including several 3-5 ft.
diameter red oaks. I also saw several old maples 24-36 in diameter,
about 3 dozen I would say. Given our -40F weather I was trying to get
an estimate of age for these trees. I have several pictures and sent
some to Tom Howard of NYOGA. I must say that your site is the best I
have seen!!!

More old Hemlocks Found	Bradley Burns
	Nov 22, 2004 16:28 PST

I found four 10-11 ft. cbh hemlocks today. I would
estimate them to be only about 80-90ft high but looked
very old.

Brad

red maples from 1813?	Bradley Burns
	Nov 24, 2004 05:56 PST

Team,

I found some interesting trees again yesterday! I
believe them to be red maples because the bark was not
like any old sugar maples I have seen. These trees
were planted by the Bonaparte family in 1813 to line a
road to a mansion on Sylvia Lake NY near my home.
Some have died but others are very healthy and would
estimate about two dozen still alive! Not "old
growth" but fascinating story and I will return for
pictures this week. Some of these trees are quite
tall due to growing so closely.

Brad

St. Lawrence County Tree Gallery

Bradley Burns: St. Lawrence County Tree Gallery, Nov 2004

Trip to St. Lawrence County Report	Bradley Burns
	Dec 10, 2004 20:26 PST

Team,

Howard Stoner traveled to the North Country last
weekend to measure some trees I had located. We took
several measurements (see below) and as the climate
would suggest, we didn't find any excessively tall
trees. However, several large diameter trees were
found and given the various ice storms and -46F record
temp, they have survived very harsh conditions. Wet
areas exist where some springs reach the surface but
the land between the rock ridges is dry and shallow.
The land is located about 20mins. south of the St.
Lawrence River. Below are some of the trees located
on about 130 acres. The area was cut probably 200
years ago but several trees were left and still
remain.

Many large trees are growing with roots over
rocks that the glaziers had cut 12k years ago. From
the records below, many types of trees were present.
The maple trees show considerable age from the bark
and the hemlocks despite appearing open grown, have
considerable age and are remnants of the ancient
forest. We were able to measure one hemlock stump and
Howard counted about 100 rings in about a 9in diameter
log...Howard is my memory correct? Many more trees
exist but we noticed that the average height was only
60-70 ft. The red oaks were massive in girth but over
the decades they have suffered considerable damage. I
will be posting some pictures on my new website soon.
I have never made a report before given I am a new
member, I hope Howard could share his thoughts?

Thanks,

Brad Burns

#518 Harrisville (many pines and large cedars/old growth)

cedar	30"dbh
white ash	16.0"dbh	72'
white pine	31.0"dbh	99'

Gouverneur (north) site

red oak	41.0"dbh	40'
sugar maple	29.5"dbh	70'
red maple	29.2"dbh	72'
red maple	31.2"dbh	58'
bitternut hickory	20.9"dbh	67'
shagbark hickory	16.3"dbh	62.5'
bitternut hickory	9.4"dbh	60'
????basswood	26.3"dbh	60'	collected leaf
sugar maple	29.5"dbh	70.5'
sugar maple	18.0"dbh	54.5'
hemlock	35.4"dbh	54'
hemlock	20.5"dbh	66'
hemlock	24.5"dbh	62'
basswood	27.0"dbh	69'
beech	11.6"dbh	60'
american? elm	11.1"dbh	55.5'
red oak	43.0"dbh	68'
white pine	15.5"dbh	63.5'
hophornbeam	13.2"dbh	36.5'
yellow birch	11.7"dbh	50'
red maple	19.6"dbh	62'
red oak	45.5"dbh	67.3'
red oak	36.6"dbh	66'
bur oak	44.6"dbh	62'

Re: Trip to St. Lawrence County Report	Edward Frank
	Dec 12, 2004 19:57 PST

ENTS,

The feild trip posted yesterday by Bradley Burns from St. Lawrence County,
NY, the Gouverneur (north) site contains enough different species to
generate some Rucker Index numbers. I have made some annotations on the
original table below. The figures girth may have seemed low compared to
other reports because they were reported as dbh - diameter breast height
rather than circumference breast height as it typical in these reports. I
added a column listing the cbh numbers (dbh x pi). These are also shown on
an attached rtf file as the topica posting frequently alters the alignment
of text tables.

Rucker Index = 66.05 tress included denoted by #
Rucker-13 Index = 61.73 additional trees denoted by +
(This is the index for all species reported from the site)
Rucker Girth Index = 87.68" trees included denoted by &

Gouverneur (north) site

red oak	41.0"dbh	128 cbh	40'
sugar maple	29.5"dbh	92.7 cbh	70'
red maple	29.2"dbh	91.7 cbh	72'	#
red maple	31.2"dbh	98,0 cbh	58'	&
bitternut hickory	20.9"dbh	65.7 cbh	67'	#&
shagbark hickory	16.3"dbh	51.2 cbh	62.5'	#&
bitternut hickory	9.4"dbh	60.9 cbh	60'
????basswood	26.3"dbh	82.6 cbh	60'
sugar maple	29.5"dbh	92.7 cbh	70.5'	#&
sugar maple	18.0"dbh	56.5 cbh	54.5'
hemlock	35.4"dbh	111.2 cbh	54'	&
hemlock	20.5"dbh	64.4 cbh	66'	#
hemlock	24.5"dbh	77.0 cbh	62'
basswood	27.0"dbh	84.8 cbh	69'	#&
beech	11.6"dbh	36.4 cbh	60'	#
american? elm	11.1"dbh	34.9 cbh	55.5'	+
red oak	43.0"dbh	135.1 cbh	68'	#
white pine	15.5"dbh	48.7 cbh	63.5'	#&
hophornbeam	13.2"dbh	41.5 cbh	36.5'	+&
yellow birch	11.7"dbh	36.8 cbh	50'	+
red maple	19.6"dbh	61.6 cbh	62'
red oak	45.5"dbh	142.9 cbh	67.3'	&
red oak	36.6"dbh	115.0 cbh	66'
bur oak	44.6"dbh	140.1 cbh	62'	#&

cedar	30"dbh	94.3 cbh
white ash	16.0"dbh	50.3 cbh	72'
white pine	31.0"dbh	97.4 cbh	99'

For most species the same tree was used for both the hieght and girth
indexes because there were only a couple examples or a single example of
those species. The red maple, red oak, and hemlock had several examples of
each and different trees were used for the height and girth indexes. The
beech used for the height index was replaced by hophornbeam in the girth
calculation.

If you add the information for the Harrisville site, although there are
only three measurements, you can bumb up the Rucker indexes for the county.

#518 Harrisville(many pines and large cedars/old growth)
cedar 30"dbh 94.3 cbh
white ash 16.0"dbh 50.3 cbh 72'
white pine 31.0"dbh 97.4 cbh 99'

Using the white ash height in place of beech, and rplacing the white pine
with the higher value, the Rucker Index = 70.8 for St. Lawrence County.
The Rucker Girth Index = 97.83", where the larger white pine girth replaces
the lesser, and the cedar girth replaces that of the hophornbeam.

Ed Frank

Re: Trip to St. Lawrence County Report	Howard Stoner
	Dec 13, 2004 11:52 PST

Ed,

Thanks so much for doing these additional calculations.
I was impressed by this site in that it has 150+ year old trees
exhibiting all the classic forms (broken tops, gnarlly trunks and
branches, etc) of old growth forest.

We definitely need to add species to our measurements of the White Pines
at Paul Smiths Elders Grove and get a rucker index for that site.
Thanks to Brad for sharing this site with us.

Howard

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