ENTS:
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A few more words on our Bartholomew mission of
yesterday. The huge
Bartholomew cottonwood generates 2425 ENTS points. The
"official" state
champion in Pittsfield beats the Bartholomew tree by 5 points.
Officially they are co-champions. The ENTS points for the
Pittsfield are
2025. The Pittsfield tree has probably lost a little crown, but
I doubt
it has ever been 100 feet in height. It's current dimensions are
86.9
feet tall by 23.3 feet around. So at its maximum height, it
would have
been thinner, so its point accumulation probably never exceeded
2100 or
2200 at the extreme.
The two huge cottonwoods present us with a
testing ground for the two
systems for judging overall size. Using circumference in feet by
height
in feet to generate one point total as opposed to the AF formula
generating another provides expereinced Ents with an opportunity
to make
comparisons of individual trees that we know intimately. The
following
table shows three great sycamores in the Northeast, their AF
points, and
their ENTS points. Will Blozan, Bob Van Pelt, and yours truly
have all
seen and measured these trees. The measurements of the Pinchot
and
Sunderland trees are more recent. They are Will Blozan's
measurements.
Tree State ENTS
Pts AF Pts
Pinchot CT
2718.6 465.0
Pine Plains NY
2992.0 461.1
Sunderland MA 2848.6
448
Their individual shapes are sufficiently
different to make it
difficult to visually compare them. However, I am inclined to
rank them
more by the ENTS point system. Either way it is a close call.
In the not too distant future, maybe we can
pay the Pine Plains tree
a new visit and take updated measurements, get new digital
images of the
three trees and post images and measurements to the website and
have a
good general discussion of different approaches to ranking the
three
equally great trees. Perhaps drawing attention to a
well-intentioned
competition between the three can get ENTS some media attention.
I suspect that the Pine Plains tree has grown enough to push
it up to
roughly the same as the Pinchot tree in total AF points and push
the
ENTS points to maybe 3000. The possibility is indeed exciting.
So that
possibility makes a visit back to Pine Plains even more
important.
Short
of Bob Van Pelt, Will Blozan, and team coming out and measuring
the three for volume via Bob's protocals, we'll never know for
sure, but
we can have a heck of a good time debating the subject of which
tree is
the most voluminous.
Bob
Robert T. Leverett
Cofounder, Eastern Native Tree Society
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