Love this video, really gives us perspective that our lives make a fraction of theirs. We should be doing a lot more to protect, respect and propagate more trees. Thank you Blair.
Fantastic growth ring calender, thanks for putting it all in perspective ! We all need to have a reminder to be grateful to the trees for our 2by4s. Thank you
What we take from the trees needs to be done in a way that saves what we have left. Our old growth forests must survive if the planet is to survive. We can’t replace what takes hundreds or thousands of years to grow. We need to see clearly with a complete understanding of the balance that man is destroying.
@@arboristBlairGlenn Why does it have to be a battle between us that want to be shaped by nature, and others that want to shape nature to suit their needs? Your channel is crucial in the fight, thank you!
@@arboristBlairGlenn what is most infuriating is seeing how poorly managed cleared land is. Most of the farm land here in Australia is poorly managed, allowing fertile land to degrade into a dust bowl. To add insult to injury, they then clear even more land and suck the rivers dry which degrades the land they have yet to clear.
This was a good forestry presentation. I have put it in my saved videos. The sole thing I would add is that every clear cut is for a reason. And for Douglas fir planting, that is to give all the new trees full sunlight. I know this is related to what you said. I just wanted to add my one cent. 🌲 Michael Dougfir.
I love counting the rings. I do for all the trees I have to remove. I salvaged a bunch of bleachers from a school that was getting torn down. Built in the 40's. It was all old growth/second growth douglas fir. 16' long 1.125" thick 9.25" wide boards. The most amazing thing is they're mostly perfectly quarter sawn and not one single knot or defect in any of them, even in the 16 linear feet. Grain is so tight you can't even see the tightening of the rings in the end grain. I got about 35 of them. Lost count around 260 years of growth in an 8" wide board.
Wow. Super interesting! I hope I'm climbing trees still at 71, kudos! It's amazing seeing your property's trees and how old they likely are. I remember as a kid my library had a tree slice they saved from an oak on the property, I don't recall how old it was, but it was 3-4 ft in diameter!
Very Interesting video. We could teach history on a cross section of a tree. I think junior school students would enjoy that. Important world events that the tree bore witness to. Possible inclusion on your next workshop fun project. One for wars...one for hit singles and movies..... one for birthdays of popular people......car models...etc etc.
You should visit the Bristlecone pine forests on White Mountain. There is a visitor center at 10,000 foot elevation with a section of tree almost 5000 years old!
It's interesting that even when a tree dies it is still playing an important role in the environment. As I understand it, the entire forest is interconnected and even nutrients are moved underground through the root system. There's a lot to learn about these plants.
We live in what was in c.1940 a black walnut orchard, real juglans hindsii. Next door neighbor recently had a digger pine removed. It was 5feet diameter. Straightest Digger I've seen. It was about 85yrs old. Some rings were big. But the last 13 years were thin. We think maybe it had a continuous water source that dried up because there are other dry years that are not reflected in the tree rings growth. I lived near Shaver Lake, near the "Creek Fire". Pine Beetle begain killing everything in 2014. Literally every pine for a 1000sq mi was being attacked. But the Creek Fire came in and burned the entire San Joaquin River drainage, a good 700,000 acres. (Offical number is 400K-ish but it's more...) There's a lot of blue stain ponderosa out there. We cut down over 1000 Ponderosa on 15 acres and milled up something like 700,000 to 1 million board feet!!
Really enjoy your informative videos! I'm not far from you in Felton. Many Firs on my property. Had to remove a few so far. The wind storm we had early last year broke one at the base splitting vertically. I was thankful it snagged in another tree. Would've taken down power lines and probably a power pole. I've noticed conk mushrooms and beetles and their tracks in the bark on some of our removed firs.. I really thought this one was healthy. In researching this trees failure the best match I could find was white rot possibly? A few feet past the base the rest of the 130' tree seemed solid. Fir and Tanoak on our land has kept us warm since we moved here. I plan on buying a sawmill later this year.
I loved this video! I do wish, however, that you had talked a little bit about the noticeable differences in growth rate at different points in time. It definitely appears to follow a cycle, and I'd love to know more about the factors that affect that.
Based on seasonal droughts, the history of our weather is very clear for this spot on the mountain. With the new disease problems, we are having a sever loss of these trees.
Water! I've always wondered from a gardening point of view if it's better to water new plants more (to make them grow faster), or to give them some tough love by watering them less (to encourage a larger root system?)
I just bought a property that a guy built a house on in 1973, he also planted some short leaf pine trees around it, well the needles on the roof, the leaners threatening to fall on the house, and the algae and mildew that the shade caused led me to remove them. Now two of these were 26-29" in dia. I thought surely they were old, but when I counted the rings, I found out he must gave planted them after he graded for the house because they were only 50 or so years old. Growth rings were 1/2" that is some fast growth.
Cut a fir near me a couple of years ago - about 52" diameter, but only 85 rings! Interestingly, a very similar size that I saw cut across a path at Big Basin was close to 400 rings in the radius.
The native trees grow so much slower than planted trees. I know of a similar size fir down in the valley that is only 50 years old. (Client planted it)
Outside of my high school wood shop, there was a giant oak cookie cut from a tree in front of the school. I recall some of the dates that were pinned, particularly the assassination of President Lincoln
@@arboristBlairGlenn while working at the city of Palo Alto, I uploaded many many videos of the work that we did planting trees spraying removing and someone in HR threatening assuming so I removed hundreds of hours of stuff and went under this name. You see now I have only a few videos that I just left just to find out if anything was ever gonna go to court and if they were going to actually sue me for just posting videos about what I did as an arborist working there for over 20 years.
You can see the irregularity in ring width with climatic change starting to happen. You look back to the60's and 70's and winter precip was "normal" and regular it seems.
Crazy to think that tree is 120 years old, but you wouldn't get much lumber out of it. Which makes me re think my opinion that trees for lumber as a renewable and sustainable source, just isn't probable.
We have learned to accept lower quality, fast growing lumber as normal. The wood being sold today will not last as long as tight grain, knot free, quarter sawn lumber from our history. Construction of homes is even more temporary as the building materials are less quality. Take plywood for instance. Most homes are sheeted in 4x8 sheets of chipboard and glue.
Nothing wrong with the fast growing plantation stuff for structural use. The most unsustainable part is usually what happens when the owner doesn't want it anymore. People tear down perfectly good houses when they are barely more than a few decades old, just because they can't be bothered keeping up with the maintenance or because they want a huge mansion or to build multiple townhouses or apartments for profit. Most of it gets buried where it decomposes anaerobically and releases methane, a greenhouse gas 20x+ more potent than the CO2 that would be released when a tree decomposes on the ground in the forest.
Lots of trees are getting sick. Folks don't realize that 'fragmentation' of the ecosystem caused by building roads, houses, and installing non-native plants in landscapes.... means that the native insects that evolved in the local ecosystem are focused down into smaller patches of native plants. Contrary to popular myth, pollinators (insects of all kinds) are specialists rather than generalists. That means they need specific plants for food and homes. When a lot of those plants are removed for one reason or another (fragmentation), the pollinators are concentrated in a smaller area. The complexity of the ecosystem is diminished, and thus, we see diseases spreading more easily. It's amazing to think of all the things that single tree has seen in its life.
It seems that all of our trees arena trouble. In the east the ash trees are all but dead; the beech trees are under attach. the maples, the same. Black walnut bug issue. I know there's more..
In the west coast, the tan oaks are dying by the millions, birch trees are suffering from lack of water (drought years), the Douglas fir is now in big trouble. Our ash trees seem okay so far. Yeah, the list keeps going.
My neighbor just had a huge 4' DF taken down that was 80 years old. We're not quite 6 miles south of you at 550' elevation. But ours don't die standing, they tend to fall first. Is that still the pitch kanker?
Please don't think this is correct.. it's proven that in wet seasons it creates a single ring.. multiple Wet seasons can produce 2 or 3 a year.. all depends on weather...
@SquirrelSniper138....Yes, the width of the tree rings depends on the environment: location, amount of water throughout the year, altitude, temperature, etc. But....trees here in North America only produce one ring per year. Now that ring is divided into two sections: the lighter section that develops during the Spring and Summer, and the darker, thinner line that develops in the 2nd half of the year. But this is still just one ring. Now, in the Tropics, trees can produce more than one ring per year. Maybe this is what you are thinking about ?
As others have stated: In the Northern hemisphere, the regular cycling between hot and cold extremes on a yearly basis results in a single and well-defined ring for each growth season- active growth during the warmer months (light-colored tissue) and dormancy during the colder months (dark-colored tissue).
Love this video, really gives us perspective that our lives make a fraction of theirs. We should be doing a lot more to protect, respect and propagate more trees. Thank you Blair.
👍🏻
Fantastic growth ring calender, thanks for putting it all in perspective ! We all need to have a reminder to be grateful to the trees for our 2by4s. Thank you
We need to respect and preserve our old growth forests before we destroy them all. The balance of this planet depends on these last forests.
What we take from the trees needs to be done in a way that saves what we have left. Our old growth forests must survive if the planet is to survive. We can’t replace what takes hundreds or thousands of years to grow. We need to see clearly with a complete understanding of the balance that man is destroying.
@@arboristBlairGlenn Why does it have to be a battle between us that want to be shaped by nature, and others that want to shape nature to suit their needs? Your channel is crucial in the fight, thank you!
@@arboristBlairGlenn what is most infuriating is seeing how poorly managed cleared land is. Most of the farm land here in Australia is poorly managed, allowing fertile land to degrade into a dust bowl. To add insult to injury, they then clear even more land and suck the rivers dry which degrades the land they have yet to clear.
This was a good forestry presentation. I have put it in my saved videos.
The sole thing I would add is that every clear cut is for a reason. And for Douglas fir planting, that is to give all the new trees full sunlight. I know this is related to what you said. I just wanted to add my one cent.
🌲 Michael Dougfir.
Thanks Michael, I guess you know firs
I love counting the rings. I do for all the trees I have to remove.
I salvaged a bunch of bleachers from a school that was getting torn down. Built in the 40's. It was all old growth/second growth douglas fir. 16' long 1.125" thick 9.25" wide boards. The most amazing thing is they're mostly perfectly quarter sawn and not one single knot or defect in any of them, even in the 16 linear feet. Grain is so tight you can't even see the tightening of the rings in the end grain. I got about 35 of them. Lost count around 260 years of growth in an 8" wide board.
Back when they decimated the old growth forests for seats for our butts.
Have you run any of it through the planer?
Wow. Super interesting! I hope I'm climbing trees still at 71, kudos! It's amazing seeing your property's trees and how old they likely are. I remember as a kid my library had a tree slice they saved from an oak on the property, I don't recall how old it was, but it was 3-4 ft in diameter!
Still 70, birthday in December. I hope I’m still fit for more years too
Really interesting. Sad about the bugs in the firs. Great to have the mill and get some useful lumber. Thanks Blair.
I do enjoy running the sawmill
We have quite a few Ponderosa Pines that are at least 500 years old they are stunning and beautiful and so magnanimous!!!
The ancient trees need to be protected.
Very Interesting video. We could teach history on a cross section of a tree. I think junior school students would enjoy that. Important world events that the tree bore witness to. Possible inclusion on your next workshop fun project. One for wars...one for hit singles and movies..... one for birthdays of popular people......car models...etc etc.
Good idea
Whatever the years the rings represent it’s great we can have some idea of age and weather over these time lines
Quite interesting again Blair 👍👍👍
You should visit the Bristlecone pine forests on White Mountain. There is a visitor center at 10,000 foot elevation with a section of tree almost 5000 years old!
Thanks for these great videos 👍🏾
My pleasure
It's interesting that even when a tree dies it is still playing an important role in the environment. As I understand it, the entire forest is interconnected and even nutrients are moved underground through the root system. There's a lot to learn about these plants.
The fungal network plays a pivotal role in that transfer, in concert with the root systems.
Everything is connected
Nature is amazing.
We live in what was in c.1940 a black walnut orchard, real juglans hindsii. Next door neighbor recently had a digger pine removed. It was 5feet diameter. Straightest Digger I've seen. It was about 85yrs old. Some rings were big. But the last 13 years were thin. We think maybe it had a continuous water source that dried up because there are other dry years that are not reflected in the tree rings growth. I lived near Shaver Lake, near the "Creek Fire". Pine Beetle begain killing everything in 2014. Literally every pine for a 1000sq mi was being attacked. But the Creek Fire came in and burned the entire San Joaquin River drainage, a good 700,000 acres. (Offical number is 400K-ish but it's more...) There's a lot of blue stain ponderosa out there. We cut down over 1000 Ponderosa on 15 acres and milled up something like 700,000 to 1 million board feet!!
The recent fire have really changed California, in a sad way.
Really enjoy your informative videos! I'm not far from you in Felton. Many Firs on my property. Had to remove a few so far. The wind storm we had early last year broke one at the base splitting vertically. I was thankful it snagged in another tree. Would've taken down power lines and probably a power pole. I've noticed conk mushrooms and beetles and their tracks in the bark on some of our removed firs.. I really thought this one was healthy. In researching this trees failure the best match I could find was white rot possibly? A few feet past the base the rest of the 130' tree seemed solid. Fir and Tanoak on our land has kept us warm since we moved here. I plan on buying a sawmill later this year.
I love Felton
So sad I can’t remember how many times you showed that fir tree looking over the valley. Here in Indiana the trees seem to grow pretty fast.
Never been to Indiana
I loved this video! I do wish, however, that you had talked a little bit about the noticeable differences in growth rate at different points in time. It definitely appears to follow a cycle, and I'd love to know more about the factors that affect that.
Rainfall-drought-rainfall-drought
Based on seasonal droughts, the history of our weather is very clear for this spot on the mountain. With the new disease problems, we are having a sever loss of these trees.
@@arboristBlairGlenn thanks!
Water! I've always wondered from a gardening point of view if it's better to water new plants more (to make them grow faster), or to give them some tough love by watering them less (to encourage a larger root system?)
I just bought a property that a guy built a house on in 1973, he also planted some short leaf pine trees around it, well the needles on the roof, the leaners threatening to fall on the house, and the algae and mildew that the shade caused led me to remove them. Now two of these were 26-29" in dia. I thought surely they were old, but when I counted the rings, I found out he must gave planted them after he graded for the house because they were only 50 or so years old. Growth rings were 1/2" that is some fast growth.
Not surprised
Sad that some of these beautiful old trees are dying.
I’m amazed when I think about a tree that’s 400+ years old! The tree was a seedling in 1600!
That puts it in good perspective. Where was this country at in 1600?
Cut a fir near me a couple of years ago - about 52" diameter, but only 85 rings! Interestingly, a very similar size that I saw cut across a path at Big Basin was close to 400 rings in the radius.
The native trees grow so much slower than planted trees. I know of a similar size fir down in the valley that is only 50 years old. (Client planted it)
I cut a cedar 25 years ago, it was a small tree, and was 80 years old then.
I too was born in 1953, December 09.
You have 4 days on me! I’m the 13th
Youngster.
Outside of my high school wood shop, there was a giant oak cookie cut from a tree in front of the school. I recall some of the dates that were pinned, particularly the assassination of President Lincoln
Seeing the ancient rings and knowing that a tree lived through history is pretty cool.
I also too woodshop in high school. Loved it. Sat next to a blind student. This guy was slow but his projects were sanded to perfection!
Gotta like that you have a tree right next to your shop also.
I have trees EVERYWHERE on this property!
What an amazing education thanks for share your knowledge and experience
Joe
Hey Joe, your UA-cam name has changed. (I Think this is Joe?)
@@arboristBlairGlenn joe from mtn view we met at Standford university
@@mvblitzyo I remember you it’s the different UA-cam name that threw me off
@@arboristBlairGlenn while working at the city of Palo Alto, I uploaded many many videos of the work that we did planting trees spraying removing and someone in HR threatening assuming so I removed hundreds of hours of stuff and went under this name. You see now I have only a few videos that I just left just to find out if anything was ever gonna go to court and if they were going to actually sue me for just posting videos about what I did as an arborist working there for over 20 years.
You can see the irregularity in ring width with climatic change starting to happen. You look back to the60's and 70's and winter precip was "normal" and regular it seems.
Well, cycles of dry and wet decades seem to go back for hundreds of years if you look at an ancient tree ring count.
Yeah guess my point is to point out how small our perception of normal is and what we perceive in a human lifetime.@@arboristBlairGlenn
Crazy to think that tree is 120 years old, but you wouldn't get much lumber out of it. Which makes me re think my opinion that trees for lumber as a renewable and sustainable source, just isn't probable.
We have learned to accept lower quality, fast growing lumber as normal. The wood being sold today will not last as long as tight grain, knot free, quarter sawn lumber from our history. Construction of homes is even more temporary as the building materials are less quality. Take plywood for instance. Most homes are sheeted in 4x8 sheets of chipboard and glue.
Nothing wrong with the fast growing plantation stuff for structural use. The most unsustainable part is usually what happens when the owner doesn't want it anymore. People tear down perfectly good houses when they are barely more than a few decades old, just because they can't be bothered keeping up with the maintenance or because they want a huge mansion or to build multiple townhouses or apartments for profit. Most of it gets buried where it decomposes anaerobically and releases methane, a greenhouse gas 20x+ more potent than the CO2 that would be released when a tree decomposes on the ground in the forest.
Lots of trees are getting sick. Folks don't realize that 'fragmentation' of the ecosystem caused by building roads, houses, and installing non-native plants in landscapes.... means that the native insects that evolved in the local ecosystem are focused down into smaller patches of native plants. Contrary to popular myth, pollinators (insects of all kinds) are specialists rather than generalists. That means they need specific plants for food and homes. When a lot of those plants are removed for one reason or another (fragmentation), the pollinators are concentrated in a smaller area. The complexity of the ecosystem is diminished, and thus, we see diseases spreading more easily. It's amazing to think of all the things that single tree has seen in its life.
Great addition to this thread. Thank you.
Are you a blacksmith?
@@arboristBlairGlenn Sure am.
Human's and tree's time scales are definitively different...
Different? Very much so
It seems that all of our trees arena trouble. In the east the ash trees are all but dead; the beech trees are under attach. the maples, the same. Black walnut bug issue. I know there's more..
In the west coast, the tan oaks are dying by the millions, birch trees are suffering from lack of water (drought years), the Douglas fir is now in big trouble. Our ash trees seem okay so far. Yeah, the list keeps going.
Interesting, I notice otherwise on old 2x4 very tight rings but on new lumber very big rings. Think old lumber was much stronger.
Tighter growth rings do make for stronger more stable lumber.
I'm not sure. Should I consult an Arborist? 😜🤘
Or a dendrocronologist😊
There it is. 👍😂
@@arboristBlairGlenn 🤣🤣🤣
great video. please sand that down, 80-120-220-400-600-1000-1500 grit. you won't regret it
Not worth it for that slice but on a nice one, sure. End grain does not take a really fine grit
My neighbor just had a huge 4' DF taken down that was 80 years old. We're not quite 6 miles south of you at 550' elevation. But ours don't die standing, they tend to fall first. Is that still the pitch kanker?
Some sort of canker disease is being spread by the bores.
2:55 I counted 81 years
I did my count with a magnifying glass on the large round
I would problem say 80 to 90 years ...
Maybe
Please don't think this is correct.. it's proven that in wet seasons it creates a single ring.. multiple Wet seasons can produce 2 or 3 a year.. all depends on weather...
@SquirrelSniper138....Yes, the width of the tree rings depends on the environment: location, amount of water throughout the year, altitude, temperature, etc. But....trees here in North America only produce one ring per year. Now that ring is divided into two sections: the lighter section that develops during the Spring and Summer, and the darker, thinner line that develops in the 2nd half of the year. But this is still just one ring.
Now, in the Tropics, trees can produce more than one ring per year. Maybe this is what you are thinking about ?
Counting rings is difficult when you have odd seasons but the count is pretty close.
Cross referencing dry spells on the ring count with what we know about past weather patterns helps
Not sure growth rings in your climate, question ing the idea of ring test
As others have stated: In the Northern hemisphere, the regular cycling between hot and cold extremes on a yearly basis results in a single and well-defined ring for each growth season- active growth during the warmer months (light-colored tissue) and dormancy during the colder months (dark-colored tissue).
Can check with drought/rainfall history
67
How did you know???
@@arboristBlairGlenn I didn't know, just patterns I see