Jul 03 2008
I’m too busy to write anything substantial, so I’m just linking to another carnival today. Festival of the Trees is longer than the latest Berry Go Round, but obviously not as good since it doesn’t include me! FotT links to the 12 most magnificent trees in the world. That made me think of the sycamore that I used to love to climb when I was growing up. Maybe it doesn’t qualify as magnificent, but it was certainly well loved.
Jun 01 2008
There’s a new edition of Festival of the Trees up at Wrenaissance Reflections. Go read it!
The best bits:
May 02 2008
The 23rd edition of Festival of the Trees is up at 10,000 Birds. Of course, you also think trees are almost the best part of the world we live in and will go read every entry. Just in case you don’t, though, the best bits are right here:
From the intro this post on magnolias got, I was expecting much larger trees! This author has obviously never visited the southern US.
The world’s oldest known tree - a spruce almost 10,000 years old.
1. Plant trees where trees belong.
2. Plant trees that belong where you’re planting them.
Morphology of baby leaves.
Mar 06 2008
Nothofagus dombeyi, or coihue, is a large tree that grows in the Andes. In the late 90s, northern Patagonia was hit with a pretty severe drought that killed many of these trees. So what was the difference between the trees that kicked it and the trees that are still going strong?
Some trees constantly live with higher water stress than others. This is usually due to where they’re growing. If a tree is on a particularly steep patch of ground, the water runs off before it can suck it up. If a tree is growing in shallow soil or on a very sunny slope, it’s going to be a lot thirstier than your average tree in the forest.
The authors of this study thought that these trees might be the ones to be hit hardest during the drought since they were already stressed. They also considered the possibility that the trees growing in more water stressed areas are different and better able to cope with drought. The trees used to the good life might have invested more in their tops than their roots, which could be bad news in a drought. A tree with a smaller root system might not be able to suck up enough water to support all its branches in a very dry year.
The authors also wondered if there were a way to look at a tree and use where and how its growing to predict whether or not it will survive a drought.
So, what did they find?
Jun 15 2007
The climate is getting warmer and winter is coming later. This means fungi have more time to grow. And fungi make tree food!
Fungi play a key role in forest ecosystems, breaking down leaf litter and returning nutrients to trees via their roots. The expanded fruiting season implies a major increase in nutrients available to trees and thus increased tree growth.
