| Amherst,
MA |
Robert
Leverett |
| Jan
09, 2006 06:54 PST |
ENTS,
Yesterday Monica and I went to the
Emily Dickenson estate in
Amherst, MA. Emily's estate is next to the Austin Dickenson
estate.
Austin was her brother.
As a big tree haven, Amherst has
many old trees. Amherst isn’t the
big tree Mecca that Northampton is, but there are lots of
possibilities
on the old estate. On the Dickenson estates, my eye was on a
cluster of
tuliptrees and one in particular that appeared to be
exceptionally tall.
I measured it and a second tuliptree. The stats are (125.4,
10.9) and
(112.6, 9.5). A third tuliptree with a broken top is 12.8 feet
around.
There are several old white pines on the
estates with their tops
gone and a few other species worth measuring, which I'll
eventually do.
All told, I haven't spent much time measuring trees in Amherst,
but
there are many large silver maples and sugar maples, a few large
elms,
and lots of oaks of four species (red, black, white, pin). But
so far
the tallest tree I've measured in Amherst is the 125.4-foot
tuliptree.
Around the area, I see plenty of 100-foot trees of half a dozen
species,
but nothing much above 100. I believe Amherst's Rucker index
will top
out between 110 and 112.
One bit of good news is that
I measured the diameter of the tall
tuliptree with the RD 1000. At 177 feet, I got a diameter
measurement of
41 inches. When I got to the tree and measured it with the
D-tape, I got
41.7 inches. That's not bad from such a great distance and it
gives me
more confidence in the measurements taken up the trunks of the
white
pines that have been modeled. Oh yes, #61 was added to the list.
No
significant changes to any of the statistics.
Anyway, the tall tuliptree is now
named the Emily Dickenson
tuliptree. Way cool.
Bob
Robert T. Leverett
Cofounder, Eastern Native Tree Society
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