ENTS--
A recent vacation up north led to some additional height
measurements.
The first weekend of this trip we spent camping and canoeing in
the
Sylvania Wilderness of the Ottawa National Forest in the western
Upper
Peninsula of Michigan. This area has been described repeatedly
by Lee
Frelich and others in previous ENTS reports, so I will skip the
longer
discussion of the geology and vegetation of this region. Suffice
to
say, this landscape is a mosaic of sugar maple-dominated
northern
hardwoods and eastern hemlock-dominated old-growth, with a
scattering of
other cover types.
We stayed in the main campground near Clark Lake (no wilderness
sites
for us this trip!). We camped in the loop closest to a small
lake
called Katherine Lake. The first day of this trip, as we waited
for
more family and friends to arrive, my brother and I dragged our
canoe
through the woods to Katherine Lake for some preliminary
paddling. This
is one of many beautiful, undeveloped lakes in this wilderness,
and has
a relatively large amount of old-growth eastern white pine
surrounding
the shoreline (I will send Ed some pictures soon). Inspired by
the
potential, I coaxed my brother, wife, and kids to the trail on
the north
side of the lake which leads into the most impressive of the
pine
stands.
This particular grove has a supercanopy of white pine over a
more
continuous canopy of eastern hemlock, yellow birch, and some
sugar
maple. It is located on a relatively high morainal hill, with
hemlock
dominated forests on the south facing slope and an immediate
transition
into more hardwood dominated forests on the flatter crest of the
hill.
The soils appeared fairly sandy and have a large amount of
rocks, and
did not look particularly fertile. The northern
hardwood-dominated
sites were somewhat richer, and showed signs of impeded drainage
(small
pockets of black ash-dominated swamps, dry following this
droughthy
summer).
The first set of trees measured were near where we put the canoe
in, not
far from our campsite:
CANOE LANDING DBH (in.) CBH (ft.) SineHT (ft.)
sugar maple 33.1 8.7
77.0 (to a visible branch lower than the
crown top)
eastern hemlock 26.4 6.9
90.4
e. white pine 29.1 7.6
94.7
e. white pine 28.6 7.5
98.2
Most of the maple, hemlock, and yellow birch in this location
were not
particularly large (20 to 30 inches DBH, 80-90 ft tall), and
even the
white pine were not very impressive. However, the pine timber
further
down the lakeshore got noticeably larger:
TRAILHEAD DBH (in.) CBH (ft.) SineHT
(ft.)
e. white pine 35.9 9.4
120.8
e. white pine 33.8 8.8
(no good view)
e. white pine 35.6 9.3
119.3
e. white pine 33.7 8.8
133.0 (highest point on dead tree)
e. white pine 31.6 8.3
118.6
e. white pine 35.3 9.2
120.3
e. white pine 35.5 9.3
127.6 (to top of live branch)
black ash 22.9 6.0
87.6
black ash 29.1 7.6
89.5
The tallest of the pines was, unfortunately, dead, and probably
stretched another couple of feet tall when living. The 127.6
foot live
white pine extended another 2-3 feet with a dead leader. The
black ash
were found in a small pocket of a dried out swamp at the top of
the
hill. In this general area, there were some 30+ inch DBH sugar
maple
and yellow birch, but I was running out of time to measure them,
so I
moved on.
However, for those interested in woodworking, on the
hike
back to the car, I ran across a beautifully figured birdseye
sugar maple
tree 26.1 inches in DBH. Had it not been culled due to heartrot
(and
located in a Forest Service wilderness area), this single tree
probably
would have been worth several thousand dollars to a veneer
buyer!
Don Bragg
*****************
Don Bragg, Ph.D.
Research forester
*****************
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