Boogerman Pine   Robert Leverett   Mar 03, 2002 19:55 PST  Folks:         The e-mail following my comments is from Will Blozan and it is simply too good not to share with everyone on the ENTSTreesList. Will's e-mail is in response to Dale Luthringer's e-mail about his recent height measurement of the Longfellow Pine in Cook Forest. The Longfellow may now be up to 182 feet in height or even more! Exciting! Dale will take more measurements in an attempt to narrow possible sources of error. When I measured a couple of growing seasons ago, it was 180.1 feet. I may have been conservative.         But before turning to Will's e-mail, I want to sing my old buddy's praises. I just viewed an awesome video of Will, Michael Davie and others climbing 3 great trees: (1) a 167-foot Loblolly giant in Congaree, (2) a 161-foot Hemlock in Walhalla, S.C., and (3) a 168 (almost) foot Hemlock also in Walhalla. The area of Hemlocks is on the East Fork of the Chattooga River. A close by White Pine tops 170 feet. My conclusion from this video is that one cannot truly know trees from ground level. The dry descriptions of growth from Oliver and Larson just don't hack it anymore. The old growth monarchs that Will climbs are so very much more than the woody-stemmed garden vegetables that Oliver and Larson describe. Will's trees are veritable hotels in the forest. They harbor so much, much more life and serve so many more functions than just storing carbon on the stem. Honestly, forest ecologists need to get up into the canopies of these grand trees and seriously study what is going on. It is absolutely amazing as to what is going on in the canopy of these trees. Ecologists who study from the ground are living in a two dimensional world and are missing a world aloft. The complexity and diversity of canopy life gives new meaning to Bill Martin's critique of designer old-growth, perhaps the ultimate human silliness. Experiments that seek to blow the tops out of trees to create artificial cavities for a select number of birds are misguided, if not down right pathetic. Will found whole colonies of polypody ferns growing on limbs 140+ feet in the air. Caches of pine seeds. Lichen growth inches thick. You name it. A whole different world. Nobody who views these films of Will's climbs of these ancient trees can ever seriously view trees in an old growth forest as just over the hill versions of tame tree farm trees. The wildness and diversity of these magnificent southern Appalachian and southern swamp forests is amply revealed from Will's canopy shots. Looking across the Conagree from a perch 160 in the air shows the tops of giant emergents. All that was missing was the head of a T-Rex. The shots have that effect.         Dale Luthringer, we definitely need to show Will's videos at the April Rendezvous. Perhaps with accompanying brew. Bob - -- - - - -- - - -- - - - -- - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - Will's e-mail follows. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Will Blozan"  Sent: Sunday, March 03, 2002 5:40 PM Subject: Fw: Longfellow Pine!!! Way to go Longfellow! I have extensive video of the Boogermen Pine (BP) and its "new" top filmed two weeks ago from an adjacent tree 167' tall. After hurricane Opal in Oct 1995, BP was reduced to a flat topped remnant of its former 207' glory. BP has two tops, the main trunk splitting into two codominants at around 140' up. Both tops sheared off at about 177 feet, and the remaining horizontal limbs formed the new highest point. Since 1995, the remaining limb on the east side has tweaked itself to vertical and become the new dominant leader (186'+). It exhibits strong annual growth whorls visible from the ground. Video closeup indicates 6-8 new inches of growth over the last few years. The west side of the tree, which is larger in diameter and has a larger remaining horizontal branch, has instead turned up a small sprout near the trunk while the limb remains essentially horizontal. (this limb was once the highest point.) It has gained several feet in height but still has not outgrown the height of the foliage on the remaining branch. Thus, on the east side a height gain was made without new growth (turned vertical), and the west side has no net height gain even with its new leader and growth. A similar situation has occurred in white pine on my parents property in Cashiers, NC. Hurricane Opal also ripped the top out of one of two twin pines in their yard. Both trees were nearly identical in height and diameter. Anyway, Opal topped one of the trees back to 8" diameter wood. The remaining limbs were nearly horizontal and very long-in excess of 20' and 5-6 inches in diameter. I considered the tree doomed and vowed to cut it down. Well, I didn't, and it rebounded with a surprise! A few weeks ago I was visiting and noticed the tree's new form. It went from basically a large "T", with the remaining two horizontal limbs (Okay, ascending a mere 10 degrees each) forming the top of the "T", to a fully twin topped tree where the tops are less than 3 feet apart and perfectly parallel! Not only have the limbs become codominant but they have surpassed the other tree (undamaged) in height! This indicates a height gain of probably 30 feet in a mere 6 growing seasons (96-01). The straighteneing of the tops allowed a "doubling" of height growth compared to conventional means. I find this method of regrowth very fascinating and ecologically important to a species so dependent on maintaining height for survival. Pinaceae rules!!! Will   Home