So how big you want'em ?

[SwampDonkey]

Visited an old growth cedar stand on the back of dad's farm he sold 2 years ago.



26 inch dbh Trembling Aspen



24 inch northern white cedar. It's leaning pretty hard and is not looking real healthy in the crown.



Here is a run of some pretty good sized cedar. The one in the middle of the frame is 16 inches at dbh, the next to the right is 14.5 inches and the next to the right and further away is 18.5 inches. I aged cedar in here awhile ago and the big ones are 200 plus years old. Almost impossible to read the rings close to the centre of the tree, some are rotten and some have rings very tight together.



Here is another view and shows the average conditions of the stand. The ground is wet in spring and fall and pools of water in the summer. Best to leave this stand alone in my opinion. There is some nice cedar in here but not worth risking possibly serious windthrow and rutting. Most of the fir and white spruce are dead or dying in the stand.

[jon12345]

I will try to get some big tree pics soon,  today I opened up my digital camera to see what was rattlin around inside of it, and saw a bright flash of light and heard a pop,  so I figure  'great, now its broke for good'  I put the stupid thing back together, put batteries in it, SLAMMED er on the floor and VOILA  camera works again 

[slowzuki]

Ok biggest tree period on our ground was a dutch elm killed fellow.  16" bar from each side and still at least 16" left in the middle, so thats an actual diameter of about 45" or so.

I've posted in other thread the big ole aspens we have on our spot.  Neighbours had a 48" sugar maple cut last year that had been there since their family got the grant nearly.

I cut a large balsam fir on our property that had butt rot badly, it was around 18" to 20" and had lost its top.

The largest spruce I have seen here was a white pasture spruce.  The butt was massive, almost 30" but tapered and split into a major limb (18") near breast height.

I cut an eastern white pine for a neighbour last year and it was near 30", not like the monsters shown here but a decent size for the wet ground it was in.


Here is the pic of one of the aspens, not the largest but within a few inches of hte largest live one.

[Max sawdust]

OK I will get my camera out and shoot some pics of big hemlock big white pine, aspen and oak in the 45th parallel.  Problem is my xc skis do not do so well of the groomed logging roads.
max

[SwampDonkey]

It's funny about eastern white pine. It will even do fairly decent growing in wet moss. We had a small bog about an acre in size that had a really nice healthy pine growing in the middle. It wasn't 30 inches by a stretch, but a nice looking tree. It was a sphagnum bog with pitcher plants and sun dew growing in it, like a typical bog. It was an oddity because most these type areas are further east and northeast of us. You'll find cedar swamps but bogs are not too common and they are usually small. Any that I've found around here anyway.

According to taper equations I use slowzuki, your estimate of DBH of your elm is pretty good. That's a respectable tree. Too bad these old elms get the disease. 

My trip up the Tobique has a few maples and a birch similar to your neighbors'. Dad cut our big ones on the farm 25 years ago for tool handles, he had a market for them at the time. I asked him how sound they were and he said they where chalk white. That's not too common, as I've gone to look at a few of those big ones and they most always have big heart or mineral, or are culverts.

My trip up the Tobique

Since we are including pasture grown trees, here's a white spruce my father's uncle planted as hedge row.



white spruce 26 inches at DBH  , 2 behind the house and there are several others over 20 inches. I'de hate to have to limb them.



balsam fir 18.5 inches at DBH, forest grown. Has a large frost crack on the back, but otherwise looks healthy. Probably has butt rot. This was the largest I seen on this lot, most are around 4-12 inches. And the volume is close to 38 cords/acre on reforested pasture. Mostly fir and poplar with scattered spruce and cedar.

I was surprised at how healthy the fir was on the closest neighbor's lot (first post of the thread), there are several in there the same size (14-18 inches range). Blows me away when I see those big fir. We cut (all I had to do with it was mark trails) some big ones over on Miramichi Lake a couple years ago.

[Murf]

Thurlow, I use the "Standard Buyer's Scale" ........

That one renders a measurement about 20% less than you'd think the size actually was. 

           

[thurlow]

Hey Murf, I meant no harm; glad you "got" it................

[Murf]

Even across the broad expanse of cyber space I could see your tongue stuck firmly in your cheek. 

Matter of fact it was an easy call, I 'd have said something remarkably similar if someone else had made the post. 

[Max sawdust]

Hemlock by marsh behind house in Northern Wisconsin.  3 or 4 like that in a small area.  Tops do not look too good.

Here is another Hemlock near by, that uprooted, I will mill this one up some day.

Here is a nice Northern Red oak (for forest grown in northern wisconsin on poor soil)


Did not get pics of some big white pine, but I was in my house pants and the snow was deep 1/2 mile from the house:D  Also have a few crop tree big tooth and quaking aspen that were not harvested by me last year durning a DNR cut.  The aspen are a little smaller DBH than the oak, but TALL TALL TALL.  (Man dropping those is a rush )

Max

[SwampDonkey]

Also have a few crop tree big tooth and quaking aspen that were not harvested by me last year durning a DNR cut.  The aspen are a little smaller DBH than the oak, but TALL TALL TALL.  (Man dropping those is a rush )

Max

Especilly, when they explode on impact. BOOOOM!!!

You better get more than the pj's on when sawing up them hemlock.

Some of them old aspen have these big upswung limbs, kind of scary in under there sawing away when they have false tinder conk sprout'n out of the trunk. I'de be afraid of one of those big limbs breaking off as it made the tip and struck a neighboring tree. Great widow makers. 

Aspen here, must be similar to over your way, they are often taller than our hardwoods when mixed with them. They wouldn't survive otherwise. We've cut all our largetooth here a few years ago, just have a few mature trembling and balm. Trembling die off here beside the house after they get about 8 inches. Don't know why unless it's elevation. Those aspen I photographed are on lower ground. I'll have to get some pics of large tooth compared to trembling growth. There is quite a difference in size at the same age.

I was visiting a corner of the woodlot where I left some maple along a brook,in an area I thinned in 1999 and the beavers cut them off. With all the aspen around, why my maples? They were growing so good too.

[Max sawdust]

SD,
ya we have a family of Beaver I have not got around to trapping yet.  Sure enough the cut some nice maples growing on the shoreline
I found some full size aspen the beavers felled (20+ inch DBH trees )  I do nor mind them clearing out the smaller stuff to release the white pine, but they sure make a mess.

Our big tooth and quaking aspen seem to grow at the same rate on our glacial soil in my area of northern wisconsin.  22-24 DBH seems to be it before they rot 50' up in the middle and then the tops blow off  

Next to the white pine and red pine the aspen are the tallest thing in the woods   The Oaks and maples seem "short" like understory trees in an mature aspen stand.  Cords add up fast with the aspen
Even though the are majestic and good for the grouse and other wildlife, I do not care for large solid stands of aspen because clear cutting at maturity is the best managment practice.
Yes I do value my life and widow makers from big aspen is a real threat.  Escape routes are always planned and I look up as I am cutting, when a 100'+ aspen starts to move I move
Max

[Ron Wenrich]

Sent a load of sycamore yesterday and I wish I had a picture for you guys.  7 logs scaled out out 4747 Doyle.  One 12' log had 1080 bf - 42" dib.  The rest were in 10' logs.

A number of years ago, I had a timber sale in the Philadelphia area.  Our red oak averaged 36" with the largest being 52".  I can't find any of the pictures we took on that stand. 

We used to routinely leave trees that were 22", as long as they were healthy.  Now the foresters mark anything over 18" as if it were some magical number, and many go smaller. 

Jim Berkheimer in Wisconsin is using 32-36" as target sizes for crop trees.  There isn't anything that says you can't manage for those sizes, just landowner and industry greed.

[Black_Bear]

Ron, you wrote:

"Now the foresters mark anything over 18" as if it were some magical number, and many go smaller."

Are the marking guides based on the internal rate of return of the tree? In other words, if we won't see a 4% (arbitrary number, every company has their own hurdle rate) increase in the return before the next entry then hack it? 

[crtreedude]

Can I join in?



This is a Ceiba - and it is probably 200' tall too.

The number of really massive trees here is dwindling all the time, but we still find them.

When you start using horses as scale for trees, you know you are talking some serious size.

[SwampDonkey]

CR, yup....no holds bared.

That's an impressive specimen. I have no idea about your species of trees, but don't let that stop ya from posting some.

[Murf]

Yeah, but that's cheating, it gets 3 summers every year in growing time.   

[SwampDonkey]

Most farmers are looking at paying farm bills, it don't matter about rates of return or cumination points on growing wood. Most of our hardwood sites in the settlements are  turning into poplar/softood stands because of clearcutting or removing too much volume and leaving suppressed flat topped, skun-up, broken topped or multistemed junk. My strategy for hardwood on my lot is to thin at 5-9 meters, do a crop tree release in 20-30 years, and space again in 20 years for pulp. But, I'm not going to live long enough. The way the industry is suffering we may not be cutting wood in NB in 30 years. Costs can't keep rising, while prices keep falling. At one time the foresty companies bought the machinery to cut thier own wood. Then they laid those guys off, who then leased the equipment to work on the company ground or move on to another career. The next step is that nobody is going to be working.

UPM is shut down since the first of the month for 3 months and there is talk that the labor has to take a 12 % pay cut. The union says no, so I guess they'de rather have no job. They are already getting 2 or 3 times as much as the average joe holding a chain saw and have a warm dry place to work 365 days a year.

[Ron Wenrich]

Bear

The only return that a lot of these guys look at is if they are going to return to the woodlot.  They figure they might as well get it while they can, then call it a "reproduction cut".   Foresters of several ilks do this.

The average log size has been declining.  Not due to lack of growth, but the number of cuts.  Red oak prices are up, so maturity happens at 14".  Beech prices are down, so that is a den tree.  Prices are more of a factor than actual maturity.

The problem with a lot of those internal rates of return is that they decline as the trees get older.  But, if you have a rate of return of 20% on $1 worth of wood, you will make less money than $5 at 5%.  If the rate of return is the only factor, then you'll cut your timber when it crosses over from pulp to sawlog.  Rate of return continues to go down as the trees get larger.

If you want to produce quality lumber, then you need some larger trees to put on better growth.  A good deal of the growth is put into high quality lumber.  Usually not the case with small stemmed trees.  The percentage of low grade wood vs high grade wood is pretty pronounced between small logs and big logs. 

So the question becomes are we interested in growing high quality wood or just growing fiber?

[crtreedude]

You are correct about the perpetual summer - a roble coral (that is a kind of oak) can be 12" at chest level in about 6 years. 

It has some pretty interesting colors too.

[Black_Bear]

"So the question becomes are we interested in growing high quality wood or just growing fiber?"

Why can't we do both? Here is an article on some new concepts being tested in the east:

http://www.ume.maine.edu/~MIAL/dh/