@spiritboat
Did Pete Nelson build that for you?
@Rookie said:
@spiritboat
Did Pete Nelson build that for you?
No, I built it myself before Pete Nelson was even on TV. (Besides, I couldn’t afford his rates.) I actually met him once at a “World Treehouse Association” seminar way back in the mid-90s, where many of us got together to swap arboreal architecture tips and techniques…I also built my own ground house too, btw. Mortgage-free and loving it.
Rip em down and build a Walgreens.
That’s what our town did.
Love trees. They cool my house in the summer and warm it in the winter.
Also love that old tree that Andy posted, although it might terrify a kid with a good imagination.
I live in one of the 3400 official “Tree City USA” municipalities, a program initiated by the Arbor Day Foundation. Our borough has a department that oversees tree-related issues on public and private property – in fact they will tend to most trees on private property (pruning, disease treatment, removal) within 12 feet of the borough rights of way to help preserve the tree cover as well as protecting the health of the greenery and the safety of adjacent structures. We’re a “sleeper” suburb of Pittsburgh, which has the highest ratio of tree cover geographically of any US city to begin with.
A big problem with trees is that too many people don’t consider how they are going to grow when they plant them and they don’t tend to pruning them as they grow to prevent them from threatening property. Much as I hate to do it because I love trees, I cut down oak, maple and ash saplings on my property every year – not hard to do when they are young. And I ruthlessly prune the ones that I allow to stand and cut down any that show too much storm damage or branch die-back.
My neighbors are not as careful. On one side there is a massive maple that he allowed to grow within 3 feet of his house foundation and 3 feet from my yard so, of course, blocked by his house on the other side, it has leaned far out over my property, shading and killing a large area of my lawn and dumping virtually all its leaves on me each fall. And on the other, that neighbor has allowed several “tree of heaven” (the odious invasive ailanthus) to grow up to 30’ tall, constantly dropping seed pods and leaves on my yard (I spend hours every season pulling up the seedlings from my gardens) – the largest is now 90% dead and will eventually topple, probably heading for my cable drop and roof. Unfortunately, it is 14’ from the right of way so I can’t get the borough to deal with it. I told her when I moved here 13 years ago that the then fairly small ailanthus should be cut down (and offered to help her with it) but she had some delusion that it was an attractive addition to her property. As do most ailanthus, it secreted toxins that killed all the downhill and adjacent trees on her property, include two previously lovely redbuds, one of which died, rotted and fell against my house (fortunately no major damage.).
American forests in general are too dense – suppression of forest fires and reduction in animals who browse them has created this condition. Forests in the early days of European colonization of the Americas were more open – the native peoples used selective burning to clear the understory to provide more meadows and a better environment for grazing animals and for hunting – that was why there were bison even far into the eastern US in the 16th century. Our woods, parks and woodlots are way too crowded so that the trees are all too spindly and tall, which makes them more vulnerable to falling over. Crowding adds to disease and parasite transmission too. You don’t get big solid trees like the one at Blenheim when they are surrounded too closely by dozens of others.
Quite a few big trees at Blenheim.
Redwood, Cambridge, UK. There are four on this property. Planted in 1810! I asked. Redwoods are numerous in England, from the tradition of importing plants from all over the world.
There are directories for the largest trees of each species in the US and world. Some of them are really amazing: https://www.monumentaltrees.com/en/records/
What is believed to be the tallest surviving American Chestnut ( 115 feet) grows not far from me,
https://umaine.edu/news/blog/2015/11/25/tallest-american-chestnut-tree-in-north-america-discovered-in-lovell-maine/
Unfortunately some wonderful huge old trees are succumbing to parasites and diseases, many of which are being exacerbated by climate shifts. Twenty years ago my brother, sis in law and I discovered the tiny (120 acres) but amazing Hemlock Natural Area near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which was one of the few remaining patches of what was once deep old-growth hemlock forests that covered much of central PA and into New York state. Most hemlocks were cut down during the 1700’s and 1800’s across the state – the tannins in the bark were used for the massive industries of leather processing.
At that time we visited, around 1995, the deeply shaded and misty valley, through which Patterson Creek runs, tumbling over rocks and ledges, was like stepping back in time – massive trees, some with trunks 4 feet in diameter and towering close to 150’ tall, and crowded with clumps of 5’ tall ferns. It was really a magical place, and you half expected to see a dinosaur or some kind of magical creature emerge from the cool shadows.
Sadly, the wooly adelgid insect infestation has destroyed nearly half of these ancient trees and changed the nature of the glen, due to the increase in sunlight from the loss of so many of them. I have resisted going back – i would rather remember it as it was.
@willowleaf said:
American forests in general are too dense – suppression of forest fires and reduction in animals who browse them has created this condition. Forests in the early days of European colonization of the Americas were more open – the native peoples used selective burning to clear the understory to provide more meadows and a better environment for grazing animals and for hunting – that was why there were bison even far into the eastern US in the 16th century.
A big part of this is actually that most of our forests are extremely young, usually not more than 100 years old and often a lot less. It’s natural for young forests with trees of similar age to be crowded. Only after those trees have matured will a large proportion of them have fallen by the wayside as a natural result of the initial overcrowding. In the largest patch of nearly-continuous forest that we have in southern Wisconsin, areas having much older trees are very clear, providing visibility of a few hundred yards during winter. Within areas having trees of moderate age, seeing 100 yards is often doing pretty good, and in the areas most recently recovering from their former lives as pasture and farm fields, visibility in winter might only be 100 feet. Thinning with advancing forest age is a natural process.
I can’t speak for elsewhere, but around here, there are a couple of invasive species that are very aggressively taking over the understory and creating an extremely unnatural dense growth, to the point that the ground is almost nothing but bare soil. Also, worth noting is that (semi-) selective burning by the natives wasn’t actually a natural process, and who’s to say that the forests would have been any worse off without it. They just would have been different. And unless I’m mistaken, that was done primarily in prairie areas. In much of the deciduous forest land around here, you’d be hard pressed to even start a fire most years. In those forests, I’ve never seen the DNR even try to do a controlled burn, but they often do that in sandier areas where conditions are a lot more dry. It’s interesting how the early settlers referred to “oak islands” in the prairie, and from what I have always heard, they called them that, not because of their appearance from a distance (islands in a sea of grass), but because they were a refuge from the claustrophobic conditions found within the prairie plants. Once they were within the trees of an oak island where the prairie plants were suppressed by shade, they could actually see around them for a good distance (it was hard to get a good view around you when the prairie plants were 8 feet tall). On that note, we can still find ancient burr oaks in this area that grew up on the prairie in pre-settlement days. You can recognize them by the knobs on the trunk which are the remains of lower limbs, which ages ago were killed by prairie fires. Some of these trees are on developed land, and others are within mature forests which grew up after the prairies were done-away with. Interesting stuff!!
Not just in the prairies – burning was initiated or natural fires actively controlled from the northeastern to the upper midwestern regions of the US by native peoples in pre-Columbian times. The forests that the earliest European settlers found in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states were more open and had enormous old growth trees. Later, those trees were largely cleared by Finnish immigrants, who had exception skill as lumberjacks and were employed by lumber companies throughout the colonized areas. Entire regions of the Northeast were deforested from the 17th through the 19th centuries. It was only when fossil fuels supplanted wood for heating and powering steamships, and chemical substitutions were found for operations like leather tanning that the forests began to grow back. They are now close to their original extent in some regions like upstate NY, but there has not been sufficient time (or the right sort of management) for the really big trees to grow back in great numbers.
The massive banyan at Thomas Edison’s historic Winter home and lab in Fort Myers, Florida, is one of the most remarkable trees I’ve seen in the US. He supposedly brought it from India when it was young in a butter tub. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHYU72mIt_c
@willowleaf said:
Not just in the prairies – burning was initiated or natural fires actively controlled from the northeastern to the upper midwestern regions of the US by native peoples in pre-Columbian times.
I don’t doubt you about that, but the reason I said “mostly in/around prairies” or words to that effect (I didn’t say “just”) is because in our Mid-western deciduous forests, fires are virtually unheard-of. I believe we’ve had many dozens of large forest fires and countless small ones in Wisconsin in the time I’ve lived here, but I don’t believe a single one of them was in a deciduous forest. Even when farmers clear fence-rows and stack huge piles of freshly cut trees, then soak it periodically with diesel fuel, the wood is is nearly impossible to burn. It takes weeks of coaxing with more and more diesel fuel added over time to burn those slash piles enough that the volume is reduced enough that it can be disposed of relatively easily. I’m not claiming any expertise on the subject. I just know I’ve never seen a case where ANY kind of hardwood which was cut from a live tree would burn, unless exposed to very hot flame for a very long time, and then it it will burn but just barely. If you can show me a case where mature trees in a Mid-western deciduous forest actually caught fire and burned without supplemental fuel being added, I’ll be very surprised.
@Guideboatguy said:
I just know I’ve never seen a case where ANY kind of hardwood which was cut from a live tree would burn, unless exposed to very hot flame for a very long time, and then it it will burn but just barely. .
I’ll attest to that based on my long experience with wood heat. Good firewood has been seasoned (allowed to dry) for at least a year. I think oak takes even longer.
I think you’ve missed the point entirely. Forest fires clear the understory, including saplings, shrubs and faster growing (and more flammable) evergreens and softwoods. Trees like oaks are fire adapted with thick insulating barks which minimize fire damage. Having the competing species and younger trees cleared out between the mature hardwoods allows them to develop to greater and fuller size instead of having to devote growth to ascending into a crowded canopy to reach light.
Here’s a scientific report that studied the rates of anthropogenic (human propagated) fires in the past 2,000 years across the eastern mesic deciduous forests. Notice the map that is color coded to fire frequency in each area. You don’t see as many fires now because humans work to extinguish them in populated areas (and all of Wisconsin is essentially a populated zone.)
http://web.missouri.edu/~stambaughm/Stambaugh_etal_2015_ConsBio.pdf
The temperatures generated in intense forest fires can reach 1500 degrees and will pre-heat and dry out live and wet wood so that it burns. You simply can’t equate the conditions of forest fires with trying to ignite a pile of firewood.
Speaking of Wisconsin, the Peshtigo fire in October 1871 remains the most deadly forest fire documented in American history. It consumed 1.5 million acres and killed over 2,000 people.
I don’t want to make a huge discussion out of this, but I’ll end by saying I really believe you are mixing and matching forests of a type that are very different from what I am thinking of. In such forests as I am thinking of, the worst that can normally happen is that the duff and grass, and if it’s bad enough, the stumps and scattered dead wood on the ground, will burn, and that most certainly will kill a lot of small saplings just from scorching of the bark and leaves, but I’ve never seen green wood burn at all in such cases, and can’t imagine a way to make it happen. It’s a fire, and it kills tiny trees, but not by burning them. You can claim that there are softwood species which burn easily when saplings, but can you name one? I can’t. (and also mentioning evergreen saplings as a fuel source misses the point and again suggests you are mixing and matching forest types that aren’t applicable here)
I do find it interesting that you state that in intense forest fires, the heat is great enough to ignite everything, as if that even applies to this discussion. What’s the point of saying something that’s very true about full-scale fire in an entirely different kind of forest when talking about a kind of forest where full-scale fires simply do not occur?
And by the way, the Peshtigo fire isn’t applicable to the point here either. That area was predominantly white and red pine, but virtually all of it had been clear-cut, and in such a wasteful manner that the amount of discarded limbs laying about, drying for years, was probably nearly equal to the amount of lumber that had been carted away. Add to that the new growth popping up (and yes, live conifers do burn, given enough heat, and there was plenty fuel for that with so much slash all over the place), and the area around Peshtigo was virtually an open powder keg, just waiting for something to set it off.