| Hollow
trees as chimneys? |
Carl
Harting |
| Sep
18, 2005 19:12 PDT |
ENTS,
...
Afterwards I walked up to the top of the ridge and measured a
hemlock
snag I’d found a couple weeks before. Circumference was 13.0
feet and
the height was 24.9 feet. It was interesting because it was
hollow the
whole way up, and most of the inside was charred black from
fire.
Looking up through the trunk I noticed that the limbs extended
both
outside and inside the trunk, as if they were arrows shot
through the
wood.
Scott Wade posted a photo of a hollow tree in Eastern PA
that was
also burned inside and I’m wondering if hollow trees were
simply
convenient places to have a fire, or if they were charred from
some
other use - some antique industrial use perhaps? Or do they
simply serve
as a record of some past forest fire? This tree stands near an
old
earthworks, possibly an old charcoal furnace. I’ve sent a
couple photos
of this tree to Ed as well.
Carl
|
| Re:
Hollow trees as chimneys? |
Lee
Frelich |
| Sep
18, 2005 19:29 PDT |
Carl:
I have seen many such trees across the continent. Most were
hollow from
some sort of heart rot, and burned after being struck by
lightning. The air
flow from the hollow creates a spectacular fire in hollow trees
that are
open to the atmosphere, whereas the hollow ones without openings
explode
due to the steam and pressure buildup caused by the lightning.
Lee
|
| Re:
Hollow trees as chimneys? |
Edward
Frank |
| Sep
18, 2005 20:26 PDT |
Carl,
Have you ever played much with a fire as you burn brush and
trash? If you
put a box open at both end vertically on the fire it really
takes off. The
flamesand heat make the air rush up through the box and creates
a draft at
the base of the box that sucks air through the fire. This really
gets the
fire going strong. It will roar and send tongues of flames
skyward through
the box until the box collapses. Then the fire returns to normal
levels.
If a hollow tree is set afire by lightning, I would guess a
similar process
would create a wooden "blast furnace" running through
the interior of the
hollow trunk.
Ed
|
| Re:
Hollow trees as chimneys? |
Fores-@aol.com |
| Sep
19, 2005 06:33 PDT |
ENTS:
Many years ago when I was a young forester working in Western
Montana for
the USFS we would often use hollow trees for our lunch fires,
especially on
those days when the temperature was struggling to get above 0
degrees. In most
cases the trees were just hollowed out but sometimes nearly
solid pitch
branch stubs filled the center of the tree like nails on a
board. Most trees just
burned hot and gave us a nice lunch fire but I can remember a
particularly
tall western larch that was broken off at about 120 feet....we
didn't know
until the fire was set that the entire length of the tree was
hollow and the
black smoke from the pitch was so thick that the ranger station
forty miles away
got calls about a plane crash....the flames shot about another
50 feet from
the top of the tree and the roar was louder than any single tree
fire I can
ever remember. My crew boss almost got fired for starting the
tree because
the location on the mountain on a crystal clear Montana winter
day made the
smoke visible for almost 100 miles.
Russ Richardson |
| Re:
Hollow trees as chimneys? |
Michele
Wilson |
| Sep
20, 2005 10:51 PDT |
| sounds
like a fun misadventure, part of what working as a forester is
all about! It musta looked like a medieval lantern... I would've
loved to have seen it from the next ridge over!
michele
|
| Re:
Hollow trees as chimneys? |
Fores-@aol.com |
| Sep
20, 2005 13:32 PDT |
Michele:
It was a crystal blue winter day with a high temperature of
about 6 degrees
at noon. There wasn't a whisper of wind that day and when the
pitch on the
inside of the hollow tree ignited the fire roared like a jet
engine shooting a
plume of thick black smoke several hundred feet into the
air....that is why
the crew boss got in trouble!!
Russ |
|
