Monica's and my wonderful new friends Paul and Beverly Dittmer took us to see two immense cottonwoods on the property adjacent to Cathy Crum's in Durango. I'm reasonably sure the trees are Fremont cottonwoods. One is certainly a double and the other is possibly a double. Statistics for the two trees are:
Tree Girth Height Crown Spread Instrument
Possible single 24.3' 97.0 94.5' TruPulse 200 & Forestry 550
Double 25.1' 110.5 90.0 est TruPulse 200 & Forestry 550
I have 4 attached images of the two trees. Image #1 shows the possible single from one side. Attachment #2 shows the same tree from the opposite side. Attachment #3 shows Monica and Beverly in from of the possible single for perspective. Attachment #4 shows the possible single from a 90 degree rotation perspective and from a greater distance. Attachment #5 shows the double with Monica, Paul, and Beverly
From these images what do the rest of you see in terms of the possible single tree being a single or double? On the pith test, the results are inconclusive, although from the photos, the structure does look more like a double than when you are actually standing in front of the tree.
I shot the double using our sine-based procedure to get the 110.5 feet. I originally got 104 feet, but found a higher top farther into the crown. After settling on 110.5, I then shot the tree using the old baseline and clinometer method and got 123.5 feet. The 13-foot error incurred from the clinometer method is actually not as much as I was expecting. I explained to Cathy what the difference in the two methods was.
Anyway, I'd very much appreciate input from those of you with a keen eye for doubles. Regardless of what the eventual pronouncement is, both these trees/tree structures are magnificent and well worth protecting.
Very nice tree. You have a better perspective looking it in person, but looking at the photos the cottonwood looks like a double.
The yellow lines are a projection straight down thecenter of each trunk. They do not intersect above groud level. The red line marks an area where it looks as if the two are abutting and fusing together. This is best shown in the decayed section in the second photo. I would call it a double, but that is just my opinion.
I want to point out that I tend to classify things on what I think is the most likely rather than taking a conservative approach and calling everything for which there is a doubt a double.
W/ENTS-
For several weeks now, cottonwoods have been running through my mind's back roads...seeing those that Colorado has offered up to Bob and Monica reminded me of portions of an essay on November (A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold, Paragraph 16) where my favorite conservationist was listing some of his favorite trees. He opined that "To me the ancient cottonwood is the greatest of trees because in his youth he shaded the buffalo and wore a halo of pigeons, and I like a young cottonwood because he may someday become ancient. But the farmer's wife (and hence the farmer) despises all cottonwoods because in June the female tree clogs the screens with cotton. The modern dogma is comfort at any cost."
While it is July, and my posting just misses the month the farmer's wife came to dislike, we here in Alaska are in the middle of our cottonwoods summer fling. Her flowers are resplendent and pendulous in their fullness, dispersing the lightest of downy seed. I can think of no better way to characterize wind currents than with individual cottonseeds, as they take the longest time to touch down to mother earth. They waft with each subtle wind current, drifting and dodging, travelling much of the time far away from the tree that bore it.
When they do land, they of course will not stay put, just as subject to ground level breezes as those treeborne. It is only against edges of lawns and flowerbeds that they now accumulate, and after the first windy day, they accumulate as if they were an unseasonable skiff of snow, still captured in 'drifts' this Fourth of July.
And of course, in our screens...
-Don
ENTS, WNTS, Others;
Monica's and my wonderful new friends Paul and Beverly Dittmer took us to see two immense cottonwoods on the property adjacent to Cathy Crum's in Durango. I'm reasonably sure the trees are Fremont cottonwoods. One is certainly a double and the other is possibly a double. Statistics for the two trees are:
Tree Girth Height Crown Spread Instrument
Possible single 24.3' 97.0 94.5' TruPulse 200 & Forestry 550
Double 25.1' 110.5 90.0 est TruPulse 200 & Forestry 550
I have 4 attached images of the two trees. Image #1 shows the possible single from one side. Attachment #2 shows the same tree from the opposite side. Attachment #3 shows Monica and Beverly in from of the possible single for perspective. Attachment #4 shows the possible single from a 90 degree rotation perspective and from a greater distance. Attachment #5 shows the double with Monica, Paul, and Beverly From these images what do the rest of you see in terms of the possible single tree being a single or double? On the pith test, the results are inconclusive, although from the photos, the structure does look more like a double than when you are actually standing in front of the tree.
I shot the double using our sine-based procedure to get the 110.5 feet. I originally got 104 feet, but found a higher top farther into the crown. After settling on 110.5, I then shot the tree using the old baseline and clinometer method and got 123.5 feet. The 13-foot error incurred from the clinometer method is actually not as much as I was expecting. I explained to Cathy what the difference in the two methods was. Anyway, I'd very much appreciate input from those of you with a keen eye for doubles. Regardless of what the eventual pronouncement is, both these trees/tree structures are magnificent and well worth protecting.
I am an unabashed cottonwood fan. Your quote from Leopold and your eloquent words will energize a search for big cottonwoods on Monica's and my return journey.
----- Original Message ----- From: "DON BERTOLETTE" <forestorat...@msn.com> To: "Western Native Tree Society" <wnts@googlegroups.com> Sent: Saturday, July 4, 2009 7:18:14 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: [WNTS] Re: Cathy Crum's Fremont Cottonwoods
W/ENTS- For several weeks now, cottonwoods have been running through my mind's back roads...seeing those that Colorado has offered up to Bob and Monica reminded me of portions of an essay on November (A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold, Paragraph 16) where my favorite conservationist was listing some of his favorite trees. He opined that "To me the ancient cottonwood is the greatest of trees because in his youth he shaded the buffalo and wore a halo of pigeons, and I like a young cottonwood because he may someday become ancient. But the farmer's wife (and hence the farmer) despises all cottonwoods because in June the female tree clogs the screens with cotton. The modern dogma is comfort at any cost." While it is July, and my posting just misses the month the farmer's wife came to dislike, we here in Alaska are in the middle of our cottonwoods summer fling. Her flowers are resplendent and pendulous in their fullness, dispersing the lightest of downy seed. I can think of no better way to characterize wind currents than with individual cottonseeds, as they take the longest time to touch down to mother earth. They waft with each subtle wind current, drifting and dodging, travelling much of the time far away from the tree that bore it. When they do land, they of course will not stay put, just as subject to ground level breezes as those treeborne. It is only against edges of lawns and flowerbeds that they now accumulate, and after the first windy day, they accumulate as if they were an unseasonable skiff of snow, still captured in 'drifts' this Fourth of July. And of course, in our screens... -Don
Monica's and my wonderful new friends Paul and Beverly Dittmer took us to see two immense cottonwoods on the property adjacent to Cathy Crum's in Durango. I'm reasonably sure the trees are Fremont cottonwoods. One is certainly a double and the other is possibly a double. Statistics for the two trees are:
Tree Girth Height Crown Spread Instrument
Possible single 24.3' 97.0 94.5' TruPulse 200 & Forestry 550
Double 25.1' 110.5 90.0 est TruPulse 200 & Forestry 550
I have 4 attached images of the two trees. Image #1 shows the possible single from one side. Attachment #2 shows the same tree from the opposite side. Attachment #3 shows Monica and Beverly in from of the possible single for perspective. Attachment #4 shows the possible single from a 90 degree rotation perspective and from a greater distance. Attachment #5 shows the double with Monica, Paul, and Beverly
From these images what do the rest of you see in terms of the possible single tree being a single or double? On the pith test, the results are inconclusive, although from the photos, the structure does look more like a double than when you are actually standing in front of the tree.
I shot the double using our sine-based procedure to get the 110.5 feet. I originally got 104 feet, but found a higher top farther into the crown. After settling on 110.5, I then shot the tree using the old baseline and clinometer method and got 123.5 feet. The 13-foot error incurred from the clinometer method is actually not as much as I was expecting. I explained to Cathy what the difference in the two methods was.
Anyway, I'd very much appreciate input from those of you with a keen eye for doubles. Regardless of what the eventual pronouncement is, both these trees/tree structures are magnificent and well worth protecting.
Bob
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Don,
I am an unabashed cottonwood fan. Your quote from Leopold and your eloquent words will energize a search for big cottonwoods on Monica's and my return journey. Bob
----- Original Message -----
From: "DON BERTOLETTE" <forestorat...@msn.com>
To: "Western Native Tree Society" <wnts@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, July 4, 2009 7:18:14 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: [WNTS] Re: Cathy Crum's Fremont Cottonwoods
W/ENTS-
For several weeks now, cottonwoods have been running through my mind's back roads...seeing those that Colorado has offered up to Bob and Monica reminded me of portions of an essay on November (A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold, Paragraph 16) where my favorite conservationist was listing some of his favorite trees. He opined that "To me the ancient cottonwood is the greatest of trees because in his youth he shaded the buffalo and wore a halo of pigeons, and I like a young cottonwood because he may someday become ancient. But the farmer's wife (and hence the farmer) despises all cottonwoods because in June the female tree clogs the screens with cotton. The modern dogma is comfort at any cost."
While it is July, and my posting just misses the month the farmer's wife came to dislike, we here in Alaska are in the middle of our cottonwoods summer fling. Her flowers are resplendent and pendulous in their fullness, dispersing the lightest of downy seed. I can think of no better way to characterize wind currents than with individual cottonseeds, as they take the longest time to touch down to mother earth. They waft with each subtle wind current, drifting and dodging, travelling much of the time far away from the tree that bore it.
When they do land, they of course will not stay put, just as subject to ground level breezes as those treeborne. It is only against edges of lawns and flowerbeds that they now accumulate, and after the first windy day, they accumulate as if they were an unseasonable skiff of snow, still captured in 'drifts' this Fourth of July.
And of course, in our screens...
-Don
ENTS, WNTS, Others;
Monica's and my wonderful new friends Paul and Beverly Dittmer took us to see two immense cottonwoods on the property adjacent to Cathy Crum's in Durango. I'm reasonably sure the trees are Fremont cottonwoods. One is certainly a double and the other is possibly a double. Statistics for the two trees are:
Tree Girth Height Crown Spread Instrument
Possible single 24.3' 97.0 94.5' TruPulse 200 & Forestry 550
Double 25.1' 110.5 90.0 est TruPulse 200 & Forestry 550
I have 4 attached images of the two trees. Image #1 shows the possible single from one side. Attachment #2 shows the same tree from the opposite side. Attachment #3 shows Monica and Beverly in from of the possible single for perspective. Attachment #4 shows the possible single from a 90 degree rotation perspective and from a greater distance. Attachment #5 shows the double with Monica, Paul, and Beverly From these images what do the rest of you see in terms of the possible single tree being a single or double? On the pith test, the results are inconclusive, although from the photos, the structure does look more like a double than when you are actually standing in front of the tree.
I shot the double using our sine-based procedure to get the 110.5 feet. I originally got 104 feet, but found a higher top farther into the crown. After settling on 110.5, I then shot the tree using the old baseline and clinometer method and got 123.5 feet. The 13-foot error incurred from the clinometer method is actually not as much as I was expecting. I explained to Cathy what the difference in the two methods was. Anyway, I'd very much appreciate input from those of you with a keen eye for doubles. Regardless of what the eventual pronouncement is, both these trees/tree structures are magnificent and well worth protecting.
Bob
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Bob-
I've run across another fan of cottonwoods....I have borrowed it from my WNTS discussion group (from my Facebook page, Discussion Group), and I think you and others may fall prey to Bass' prose:
Rick Bass, in “The Wild Marsh” [Copyright 20009; Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt; Boston, New York] on page 161 examines the richness of life
he has found across his twenty years there and one of his comments struck a
poignant note for me, and perhaps others who live around cottonwood trees:
“Around this same time- it can
happen as early as the first or second day of June- the green cottonwood buds,
swollen and turgid with the quick rush of chlorophyll, will begin shedding
their heavy, resinous husks as the leaves emerge, looking like nothing else so
much as the green tips of candle flame. Entire trees are alight in this manner,
like candelabras, and if you are standing beneath one of these trees late in
the afternoon, you can hear the sound all around you of the heavy, sticky bud
husks falling to the forest floor, pattering like rain onto the forest’s carpet
of last autumn’s dried yellow-brown leaves. And as you listen, beneath the blue
sky, to that rain-like sound of the leaves being born- sticky husks landing on
you, bouncing off you like hail- you can scent the exquisite odor of their
emergence, and there is no other smell like it in the northern Rockies, no
other smell like it in the world, when the cottonwoods begin to breathe and to
exhale their sweet green breath into the valley.
(Later into June, not too much
later, on an even warmer and windier day, you will be walking along a rushing creek and will stop with amazement
as the sky before you fills with swirling white feathers and flakes. The temperature might be eighty degrees, the
wind warm and from the south. The cottonwoods have just released their seeds,
their cotton-you know this, you remember it from this time last year, and the
year before, and the year before, but so ass-whipped are you still from
winter’s brute and sun-cheap passage that you physically fling at the sigh of
what appears to be more damn snow, snow in June, even on a hot, windy
afternoon…)
Shortly into June-usually within
those first couple of days, as the sticky green pods of cotton wood resin are
oozing and pattering to the ground, and as the cries of warblers, vireos, and
the red-wined blackbirds return (the snipe have been here a long time already,
wind winnowing)- the deer disappear, as if they have left the county. The
simply vanish, like guests leaving a party much too early- and you know that
they have gone off into the most remote places, the safest, shadiest, most
hidden places, to begin preparing the to give birth to the fauns, which having
been conceived back during the falling snows of November, were then carried
across the long perils of the sleeping winter, crossing all t he way across the
warming spring, finally, safely, into the tumultuous country of June.”
I take a walk through cottonwoods every day of the year I'm here, and think I am attuned to their comings and goings, but after reading this snippet, my eyes are opened wider these days~
-Don
Don,
I am an unabashed cottonwood fan. Your quote from Leopold and your eloquent words will energize a search for big cottonwoods on Monica's and my return journey. Bob
----- Original Message -----
From: "DON BERTOLETTE" <forestorat...@msn.com>
To: "Western Native Tree Society" <wnts@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, July 4, 2009 7:18:14 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: [WNTS] Re: Cathy Crum's Fremont Cottonwoods
W/ENTS-
For several weeks now, cottonwoods have been running through my mind's back roads...seeing those that Colorado has offered up to Bob and Monica reminded me of portions of an essay on November (A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold, Paragraph 16) where my favorite conservationist was listing some of his favorite trees. He opined that "To me the ancient cottonwood is the greatest of trees because in his youth he shaded the buffalo and wore a halo of pigeons, and I like a young cottonwood because he may someday become ancient. But the farmer's wife (and hence the farmer) despises all cottonwoods because in June the female tree clogs the screens with cotton. The modern dogma is comfort at any cost."
While it is July, and my posting just misses the month the farmer's wife came to dislike, we here in Alaska are in the middle of our cottonwoods summer fling. Her flowers are resplendent and pendulous in their fullness, dispersing the lightest of downy seed. I can think of no better way to characterize wind currents than with individual cottonseeds, as they take the longest time to touch down to mother earth. They waft with each subtle wind current, drifting and dodging, travelling much of the time far away from the tree that bore it.
When they do land, they of course will not stay put, just as subject to ground level breezes as those treeborne. It is only against edges of lawns and flowerbeds that they now accumulate, and after the first windy day, they accumulate as if they were an unseasonable skiff of snow, still captured in 'drifts' this Fourth of July.
And of course, in our screens...
-Don
ENTS, WNTS, Others;
Monica's and my wonderful new friends Paul and Beverly Dittmer took us to see two immense cottonwoods on the property adjacent to Cathy Crum's in Durango. I'm reasonably sure the trees are Fremont cottonwoods. One is certainly a double and the other is possibly a double. Statistics for the two trees are:
Tree Girth Height Crown Spread Instrument
Possible single 24.3' 97.0 94.5' TruPulse 200 & Forestry 550
Double 25.1' 110.5 90.0 est TruPulse 200 & Forestry 550
I have 4 attached images of the two trees. Image #1 shows the possible single from one side. Attachment #2 shows the same tree from the opposite side. Attachment #3 shows Monica and Beverly in from of the possible single for perspective. Attachment #4 shows the possible single from a 90 degree rotation perspective and from a greater distance. Attachment #5 shows the double with Monica, Paul, and Beverly From these images what do the rest of you see in terms of the possible single tree being a single or double? On the pith test, the results are inconclusive, although from the photos, the structure does look more like a double than when you are actually standing in front of the tree.
I shot the double using our sine-based procedure to get the 110.5 feet. I originally got 104 feet, but found a higher top farther into the crown. After settling on 110.5, I then shot the tree using the old baseline and clinometer method and got 123.5 feet. The 13-foot error incurred from the clinometer method is actually not as much as I was expecting. I explained to Cathy what the difference in the two methods was. Anyway, I'd very much appreciate input from those of you with a keen eye for doubles. Regardless of what the eventual pronouncement is, both these trees/tree structures are magnificent and well worth protecting.
Bob
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----- Original Message ----- From: "DON BERTOLETTE" <forestorat...@msn.com> To: "Western Native Tree Society" <wnts@googlegroups.com> Sent: Tuesday, July 28, 2009 3:32:26 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: [WNTS] Re: Rick Bass' Cottonwoods~no pictures, involves reading short narrative...
Bob- I've run across another fan of cottonwoods....I have borrowed it from my WNTS discussion group (from my Facebook page, Discussion Group), and I think you and others may fall prey to Bass' prose:
Rick Bass, in “The Wild Marsh” [Copyright 20009; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Boston, New York] on page 161 examines the richness of life he has found across his twenty years there and one of his comments struck a poignant note for me, and perhaps others who live around cottonwood trees:
“Around this same time- it can happen as early as the first or second day of June- the green cottonwood buds, swollen and turgid with the quick rush of chlorophyll, will begin shedding their heavy, resinous husks as the leaves emerge, looking like nothing else so much as the green tips of candle flame. Entire trees are alight in this manner, like candelabras, and if you are standing beneath one of these trees late in the afternoon, you can hear the sound all around you of the heavy, sticky bud husks falling to the forest floor, pattering like rain onto the forest’s carpet of last autumn’s dried yellow-brown leaves. And as you listen, beneath the blue sky, to that rain-like sound of the leaves being born- sticky husks landing on you, bouncing off you like hail- you can scent the exquisite odor of their emergence, and there is no other smell like it in the northern Rockies, no other smell like it in the world, when the cottonwoods begin to breathe and to exhale their sweet green breath into the valley.
(Later into June, not too much later, on an even warmer and windier day, you will be walking along a rushing creek and will stop with amazement as the sky before you fills with swirling white feathers and flakes. The temperature might be eighty degrees, the wind warm and from the south. The cottonwoods have just released their seeds, their cotton-you know this, you remember it from this time last year, and the year before, and the year before, but so ass-whipped are you still from winter’s brute and sun-cheap passage that you physically fling at the sigh of what appears to be more damn snow, snow in June, even on a hot, windy afternoon…)
Shortly into June-usually within those first couple of days, as the sticky green pods of cotton wood resin are oozing and pattering to the ground, and as the cries of warblers, vireos, and the red-wined blackbirds return (the snipe have been here a long time already, wind winnowing)- the deer disappear, as if they have left the county. The simply vanish, like guests leaving a party much too early- and you know that they have gone off into the most remote places, the safest, shadiest, most hidden places, to begin preparing the to give birth to the fauns, which having been conceived back during the falling snows of November, were then carried across the long perils of the sleeping winter, crossing all t he way across the warming spring, finally, safely, into the tumultuous country of June.” I take a walk through cottonwoods every day of the year I'm here, and think I am attuned to their comings and goings, but after reading this snippet, my eyes are opened wider these days~ -Don
I am an unabashed cottonwood fan. Your quote from Leopold and your eloquent words will energize a search for big cottonwoods on Monica's and my return journey.
Bob
----- Original Message ----- From: "DON BERTOLETTE" <forestorat...@msn.com> To: "Western Native Tree Society" <wnts@googlegroups.com> Sent: Saturday, July 4, 2009 7:18:14 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: [WNTS] Re: Cathy Crum's Fremont Cottonwoods
W/ENTS- For several weeks now, cottonwoods have been running through my mind's back roads...seeing those that Colorado has offered up to Bob and Monica reminded me of portions of an essay on November (A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold, Paragraph 16) where my favorite conservationist was listing some of his favorite trees. He opined that "To me the ancient cottonwood is the greatest of trees because in his youth he shaded the buffalo and wore a halo of pigeons, and I like a young cottonwood because he may someday become ancient. But the farmer's wife (and hence the farmer) despises all cottonwoods because in June the female tree clogs the screens with cotton. The modern dogma is comfort at any cost." While it is July, and my posting just misses the month the farmer's wife came to dislike, we here in Alaska are in the middle of our cottonwoods summer fling. Her flowers are resplendent and pendulous in their fullness, dispersing the lightest of downy seed. I can think of no better way to characterize wind currents than with individual cottonseeds, as they take the longest time to touch down to mother earth. They waft with each subtle wind current, drifting and dodging, travelling much of the time far away from the tree that bore it. When they do land, they of course will not stay put, just as subject to ground level breezes as those treeborne. It is only against edges of lawns and flowerbeds that they now accumulate, and after the first windy day, they accumulate as if they were an unseasonable skiff of snow, still captured in 'drifts' this Fourth of July. And of course, in our screens... -Don
Monica's and my wonderful new friends Paul and Beverly Dittmer took us to see two immense cottonwoods on the property adjacent to Cathy Crum's in Durango. I'm reasonably sure the trees are Fremont cottonwoods. One is certainly a double and the other is possibly a double. Statistics for the two trees are:
Tree Girth Height Crown Spread Instrument
Possible single 24.3' 97.0 94.5' TruPulse 200 & Forestry 550
Double 25.1' 110.5 90.0 est TruPulse 200 & Forestry 550
I have 4 attached images of the two trees. Image #1 shows the possible single from one side. Attachment #2 shows the same tree from the opposite side. Attachment #3 shows Monica and Beverly in from of the possible single for perspective. Attachment #4 shows the possible single from a 90 degree rotation perspective and from a greater distance. Attachment #5 shows the double with Monica, Paul, and Beverly
From these images what do the rest of you see in terms of the possible single tree being a single or double? On the pith test, the results are inconclusive, although from the photos, the structure does look more like a double than when you are actually standing in front of the tree.
I shot the double using our sine-based procedure to get the 110.5 feet. I originally got 104 feet, but found a higher top farther into the crown. After settling on 110.5, I then shot the tree using the old baseline and clinometer method and got 123.5 feet. The 13-foot error incurred from the clinometer method is actually not as much as I was expecting. I explained to Cathy what the difference in the two methods was.
Anyway, I'd very much appreciate input from those of you with a keen eye for doubles. Regardless of what the eventual pronouncement is, both these trees/tree structures are magnificent and well worth protecting.
Bob
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