| Well,
I've been out of town, but when I got back last week I finally
got permission to climb and measure the pignut hickory in
Swannanoa. So today John Parmenter and I did just that, after
being blown out of it on Tuesday. It's really a beautiful tree,
obviously pretty old and with great structure, though the trunk
is hollow at about 110 feet or so- you can look into a racoon-sized
hole and see the shell of wood about 4 inches thick. There are
two leaders at the top, nearly equal in height, so we measured
both. The west leader measured to 162'4", the east leader
was 163'4".
I'm happy
that it is that tall, really amazing. You can't even really tell
until you're up in it how it just keeps going. I'm giving myself
a break on my lasered measurements because it's really hard to
find a place to shoot without being in the middle of a
multiflora rose patch, and all of the crowns of the tree around
it are shorter and right in the line of sight. But I'm not sure
how I got so far off the last time I measured, getting 161.75
and 166.95. Undermeasuring is more understandable, hitting a
side limb, but whatever. It's still a super tall hickory!
I didn't try
to get any volume measurements, but I did get a few other
measurements- at 96 feet, right below the main crown (there are
a few other limbs scattered below) the girth was 7'11", and
at 72 feet, right below the lowest limb, the girth was 8 feet
even! The dbh is 11'2", and that's above any flare, it very
slowly tapers from there up.
A lovely and venerable tree.
Michael
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