Merchants Millpond State Park in NC   Neil Pederson
  Aug 06, 2007 08:45 PDT 
hi Gary,

I visited there once a few yrs ago. The manager suspected the American
beech were old-growth. I'm kind of skeptical about that. Even though the
trees are fairly good size, the long growing season and what should be
somewhat decent soils should make it easy to grow large beech in short
order. It might be hard to document how old they are as beech tend to
hollow. It would be great to find out.

A student from UNC Greensboro (Jason Ortegren
http://www.uncg.edu/geo/Lab_Fac/Lab_Fac.htm ) might be coring the
baldcypress sometime soon. Hopefully there will be some ages from him in the
future.

It is a beautiful park with a wonderful stand of American beech in the
Coastal Plain.

hope this helps,
neil



On 8/3/07, gary-@bellsouth.net wrote:
 

Anybody been there?