Gastro Gnome - Eat Better Wherever

Big tree thread

I always like the way Steinbeck summed up Redwoods:

“The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time.”​

 
Been fortunate enough to see the oldest,the tallest,the largest trees ,known. Had some Coast live oaks & Laurel trees that covered an acre with the canopies on my place in SLO county.You could see the trees from sat. pics.
I still stumble into some massive trees here in SW NM. 12' based Alligator Junipers,60' pinions...where a 6" diameter tree could be 100 yrs old.
 
In my part of the world, the trees are not huge, but more importantly, they are being strangled to death. At one time they grew in the open and you can still see the signs of this in their form. But now, they are being strangled and smothered by younger, aggressive trash trees. The best ones are already gone or only their skeletons remain.

Now, they look 1000 times more interesting than the trees around them, but they are doomed.
 

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Great thread. One of the biggest white pines in the area is in the background of this photo. I didn’t realize the tree was in the picture until a few people told me they know what lake I fish.
 

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Sequoia/King's Canyon NP in CA is definitely on my 'Go back to...someday' list. Home of the world's largest tree.

The cedars at Ross Creek (near Libby, MT) aren't bad either.
 

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I don't have a photo of it, but someone at UNL (Nebraska-Lincoln), years ago, gave a talk using photos he had found in archives that were at least 100 yrs old. He then went out and repeated those photos in the 1990s. One particular pair of photos that I will never forget was of a small juniper on a bluff. After 100 yds, it was unchanged. Right down to the smallest branches in the first photo - smaller than my little finger - they were identical. The tree has been suspended in time. Not growing, not shrinking. Not even the smallest twigglets had changed. I makes me wonder how old that tree really was.
 
I don't have a photo of it, but someone at UNL (Nebraska-Lincoln), years ago, gave a talk using photos he had found in archives that were at least 100 yrs old. He then went out and repeated those photos in the 1990s. One particular pair of photos that I will never forget was of a small juniper on a bluff. After 100 yds, it was unchanged. Right down to the smallest branches in the first photo - smaller than my little finger - they were identical. The tree has been suspended in time. Not growing, not shrinking. Not even the smallest twigglets had changed. I makes me wonder how old that tree really was.
I have a book,Fire in Sierra Nevada Forests, with photos from very 1st in 1800's and taken again 100 years later from exact same spot. Way fewer trees back then and some are still in the pics.
Seen some monsters way back in the Sierras, 12' diameter Sugar pines,10' Ponderosa's, firs even bigger. Then there are the Giants, Sequoia's, 20'+ diameter.
Sat next to Methusila a few times,the oldest living known thing on earth. Bristlecone Pine in White Mtns of CA.
 
Really wish I had some photos of the sycamores I used to run across in the Ozarks. There are a relatively fast growing tree, but they are true kings of the riverbottoms when you see them- they tower over everything around them, white branches standing out against either green or gray surroundings depending on the season. I've seen several I would easily put it 6 ft in diameter, and a few that would be even larger.
 
Big live oaks are common in the south, but I've never see a big one in the woods until this one. It grew deep in the Atchafalaya Basin on a piece of higher ground between two swamps. Most live oaks are wide but short since they grew in open areas. This one had to compete for sunlight. As with probably everyone else's photo, this photo does not do its size justice. I had it marked on a GPS that I have since lost. I know the general area it's in, but I would really like to see this tree again.

tree.jpg
 
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