Wood Facts A Series Tuesday

[Dawie]

Let's talk old age today.The last link tells you unauthorised page just scroll down a bit and click the pdf pic and mr White's techniques will be yours for the reading.
David

Up until a few years ago, the world's oldest living tree, a Bristlecone Pine {Pinus longaeva}, named the Methuselah was located in the Great Basin National Park, California. It is approximately 4,844 years old. It is also the tallest living {55 foot} Bristlecone Pine. Now there may be at least two trees that are older!
http://www.holgerlorenz.com/page4/page21/page21.html

With John White's refined measurement techniques of today {see below}, The Lime {Tilia cordata}, in the Silkwood at Westonbirt Arboretum (Near Tetbury, Gloucester, U.K.) is probably around 6000 years old.
http://www.straighttalkpsychics.com/topics/trees/lime.htm

The Fortingall Yew {Taxus baccata}, in Glen Lyon, Perthshire, Scotland, might be as much as 9000 years old. The usual way of calculating a trees age by counting the annual rings in the trunk or by carbon dating, are not accurate when it comes to Yews because a Yews trunk tends to hollow with age, while it continues to grow by rooting its branches and wrapping them around itself. There is even documentation of the formation of aerial roots growing inside the hollow trunk. Another reason are Yews have been known to stop growing for long periods of time, {documented 325 years}, thus having no growth rings for that period.
http://www.scotlandhereandnow.com/2010/08/oldest-living-organism-in-europe.html

John White's method of estimating a tree's age is by measuring its trunk circumference approximately 5 feet from ground level. He had access to and studied more than 100,000 tree measurements and multitudes of growth ring patterns from broken or cutoff stumps and concluded that growth rings are closer together on the outside portion of the stump. His technique shows that trees grow at different rates in the three phases of their lifetime, Formative, Middle Age and Senescence (Old Age}. With the evidence he has complied, tables of expected growth, relative to trunk size have been made for numerous common trees.
http://www.forestry.gov.uk/pdf/fcin12.pdf/

[Mainewoods]

Thanks David!!!  Once again, mother nature shows us that we don't know as much as we think we do!!

[Russ C]

Now that are some old trees. Wow. 

[Marcellarius]

feeling young again