Campfire Pine, MSF

     Friday was spent in Monroe State Forest. After finishing the
boundary work, I decided to remeasure the Campfire Pine. It is a double
and heretofore, I had its combined trunk circumference listed as 12.9
feet. As a consequence of Friday's measurements, its height increased
slightly from 148.0 to 148.3 feet. Its double trunk is now 13 feet
around, but with my trusty RD 1000, I was able to separately model the
larger or main trunk. As a single trunk, it would be 10.5 to 10.8 feet
around. The RD 1000 works well to permit the analysis of fused trunks by
modeling each individually. The point of fusion produces a distorted
ellipse. I also measured a new tall tree American basswood for Monroe
State Forest. At 110.8 feet, it pushes the Rucker index of MSF to
122.43. That's not bad.

Tecumseh Pine, MTSF

    Saturday saw Holly Post and me model the bulky Tecumseh tree in
MTSF. I'll cut to the chase. Tecumseh computes to a hefty 931 cubes,
thus eclipsing the Saheda tree by 115 to 120 cubic feet. Tecumseh's
height is now 161.6 feet. It has grown 1.4 feet in two years since Will
Blozan climbed it. Tecumseh's circumference is 11.7 feet.

    I spent a good deal of time locating the center point between the
down hill and up hill sides. From the mid-slope spot I chose as 4.5 feet
above base, at that level, it is 4 feet to the base on the up hill side
and 5.33 feet on the down hill side.   So as of the end of August 27th,
the Tecumseh tree was proclaimed as the largest pine in MTSF.

Hiawtha-Mohawk Pine, MTSF

    On Sunday, I braved the rain alone and went to MTSF to model the
sister pine of Big Bertha, which was the largest pine in MTSF before she
died. Big Bertha was 14.6 feet around - a whopper. I had quickly
measured her sister tree last fall on an outing with John Knuerr, Susan
Scott, and John Eichholz. However, I didn't establish a good base point
for that tree. On Sunday I did. Then I valiantly tried to model its
confusing trunk. What a challenge!

    The tree grows on a slope. At 2 feet above the mid-point of the
slope, the pine is a solid 14.5 feet around. At 4.5 feet above its
mid-slope base, it narrows to 12.5 feet. It holds most of that shape,
narrowing from a diameter of 4.0 feet to 3.7 feet at 31 feet above the
base. It then become wider. It spreads as two large trunks and one small
trunk emerge from an 8-foot fused section of trunks. There is a lot of
wood in that 8-foot section, folks. The tree's diameter bulges to 4.1
feet at just below the point at which the trunks become distinct. I
actually measured a diameter of 4.22 feet, but I doubted my measurement
due to my shaky hand. I arbitrarily shaved off 0.12 feet of diameter.

    By 50 feet above the base, two distinct trunks have emerged and both
are very close to 2 feet in diameter and neither tapers perceptibly for
another 35 to 40 feet. My original diameter measurements with the RD
1000 were 24 inches at both 49 and 86 feet, but I arbitrarily reduced
them to 23.9 and 23.8 inches to compensate for handshake. From 49 feet
to 86 feet, I also reduced the volume from what a frustum of a cone,
over that length, would have given by using a factor of 0.30 instead of
0.33. From 86 to 137 feet, I reduced the factor from 0.33 to 0.25,
having observed that the conical form sometimes overstates the volume of
the final section when that section is several tens of feet long. The
last 4.6 feet of height were ignored in terms of modeling. I included
the final section as part of the limb structure.

   After computing trunk volume, I added 4% volume for the limbs, a
moderately conservative figure. Incidentally, the 3rd trunk is
considerably smaller than the first two. I modeled it as 1/7th the
volume of either of the larger two. This actually may be liberal.

     The resulting measurements and obvious manipulations gave me 1,001
cubic feet of trunk and limb volume. My raw calculations were close to
1,200, which I absolutely did not believe. However, I do believe that
this extraordinarily chunky, odd-shaped tree may be a 1,000-cubic
footer. At this point the Hiawatha-Mohawk Pine deserves the benefit of
the doubt.

     Rain and intervening vegetation caused me many measurement
problems. I turned the air blue at times. Over the next several months,
I will spend a lot of time with this huge, contorted pine. But for now,
it goes into the books as 141.6 feet in height, 12.5 feet in
circumference, and 1,001 cubes volume. However, I do acknowledge that
even with the reductions, the volume of the Hiawatha-Mohawk Pine may be
over-stated by as much as 100 cubic feet. It is just a gut feel - but
that remains to be determined. At this point, I proclaim it as the
largest pine by volume in MTSF and the second 1,000-cubic footer in
Massachusetts. That is worth a celebration, even if premature.

     As a final comment, the extremely complex shape of the
Hiawatha-Mohawk tree makes trunk modeling via conventional log methods
futile. Forget looking up volumes in tables. The big tree must be broken
up into many segments, with each segment being studied a long, long
time. The chances for significant error pop out at every change of
curvature. For now, the Hiawtha-Mohawk Pine has a second name - the
Puzzle Pine.

Bob


Robert T. Leverett
Cofounder, Eastern Native Tree Society