Wonderful 50! Thanks for posting.

+oM

Great to see those, thank you.

tj

Is the site publicly accessible?

Impressive firs. The Nordmann seedings must have a fair bit of shade tolerance when young.

The Nordmann at my house growing up was ~90' tall w/a 2.5' trunk ABH (about 60 yrs old), and being open grown was denser than these.

Highlands is an interesting little mountain town, and one that I wouldn't mind retiring to someday. Great climate. I was there about five years ago, but unfortunately didn't get to see these trees. All I got was a lousy t-shirt. ;)

bboy......The "Trees" are across the street from local High School track field and the grove fronts on two streets.....very accessible!...I've heard they belong to the local "Hikers Club"....Google coordinates are 35 degrees 02' 56.30" N 83 degrees 11' 45" W...note the distinct shadows projecting Northward

beng.....Anchient Nordmans are indeed a rare comodity in the southern Applachian region and I suspect this would also apply to entire eastern US.

basic....Quite a change has occurred in the past 5 years as the "Millions" of Eastern Hemlocks native to the area are mostly dead!

Conifer50, unfortunately the Nordmann was struck by lightning in 1985, ripping a trunk wound from top to bottom. But it didn't die completely -- a large side branch near the bottom (away from the trunk wound) survived & even had its own small, upturned "crown" intact about 25' high. But my parents moved out that yr & the new owners cut it down.

I have a number of old Kodak photos of it, but I don't have a scanner.

conifer50:

Thanks for this post and the pictures. I like to plant and promote native trees, but sometimes there is too much of an irrational insistance on "native" trees. Nordmann fir and Oriental spruce are just two of the wonderful trees that have been imported--trees which so far here have proved to be disease resistant and non-invasive. Yes, in some areas, these can reproduce, but as far as I know, in ways that are not destructive.

Norway spruce in another very fine non-native tree--one that has received wide acceptance, fortunately. Just a note on the tallest spruce in the eastern US: "Tallest spruce in E. US is a 156' Red Spruce in GSMNP." Well, tallest MEASURED spruce. I have a number of Norway spruce candidates I would like to have measured. I suspect that, for now, the 156' red spruce could be the tallest, but I am not sure. And if it is the tallest, it won't be for long. I have been estimating tree heights for years using a simple method of sighting up. I am usually quite close--usually within 10' or so with trees in the 150 foot range. There are a number of NS trees that I believe are about 150 feet tall--if I am just a bit on the low side with my estimate, one of them could be the eastern champ. But these trees are still growing at a reasonable rate, and I could see them get to 170' or more. In ideal locations, with a strong strain, I think 200 feet is possible for Norway spruce in the eastern US. Dr. John Genys, former professor at the U of MD, once told me that he thought the right strain in the right place here in the us could match any NS in Europe. I think the tallest has been measured at about 215'.

And I could see Oriental spruce getting very tall also. I think these in Europe have grown to about 200'. I haven't seen enough Nordmann fir trees to have a guess about those. And I am not sure what their maximum height is in Europe. Of course our western Sitka spruce is the world's champ. At one point the tallest measured was 286, but I think I read somewhere that they recently found one over 300'.

--Spruce

Spruce if you sight a level line at a distance away from the tree and use a protractor to measure that angle when sighting to the top of the tree you can figure the height.

The height would be the side opposite the angle you measure and the distance away from the tree trunk is the side adjacent. Look up the tangent of the angle you measure and multiply it times the distance out from the tree and you have the height.

Example; You measure out level 100 ft from a tree trunk (or better, the estimated center of the trunk) you get an angle of 40 degrees from level to the top of the tree. The tangent of 40 degrees is .83909963... OK, take the 100 feet out multiply it by .839009963 and you get 83.9 feet which is the height of the tree (or the side opposite)

Say you were 100 feet out and the angle was 45 degrees then; the tangent of 45 degrees is 1. 1 times 100 = 100 foot tall tree. Just make sure you measure out level or this will not work (has to be a right triangle)

I have some real tall Eastern White Pines (Pinus strobus), a couple 100 feet or so that I am now wound up to actually go measure. The girth of one is about 30 inches accross. I guess I could measure the circumference and divide by PI (3.1416) and be exact as well.

I must have stayed awake during some of those geometry lessons.

Measured what is close to the tallest pine and the caliper is 34.69577759 inches. In the spring I will learn how to properly use my new camera and take some pics of my humble 1/2 acre +. The nature is nice and my feeble attempts to copy nature may be interesting.

Quite a change has occurred in the past 5 years as the "Millions" of Eastern Hemlocks native to the area are mostly dead!

From what?

Agelid beetles. I have a row of Canadian Hemlocks on my north property line and have been attacked. It looks like snow, mostly on the north side lower and underbranches. A friend I worked with was relating how he has his sprayed and it cost him $1500 twice a year. He said I should check mine. When I did they were all over and some branches were dying. They suck the needles dry and will kill the tree in a few years.

I spray with "dormant" or horticultural oil (insecticidal soap is good too) in the spring and this keeps it under control. They are never free of them and wild trees are being wiped out. I get a bottle at Home Depot for about $10, sprayer and all, that reaches almost to the top (not much of a problem at the tops, the bugs don't like the exposure) of my 15 trees. Unfortunately this cannot be done for wild trees.

If I had to pay $3000 a year to keep these trees they would be gone by now. I told my friend what I do and he keeps paying for someone to spray his trees. Go figure.

"Dr. John Genys, former professor at the U of MD, once told me that he thought the right strain in the right place here in the us could match any NS in Europe"

Probably true, but you'd need to wait quite a while for them to become fully mature. Tallest Picea abies I know of is 63m, at Perućica primaeval forest in the Balkans (Bosnia - Serbia border area); the tallest planted in Britain (a young tree, by comparison) is 52m.

"And I could see Oriental spruce getting very tall also. I think these in Europe have grown to about 200'. I haven't seen enough Nordmann fir trees to have a guess about those. And I am not sure what their maximum height is in Europe"

Maximum recorded for P. orientalis is 57m (Teberda, Russia: Gymnosperm Database), but Abies nordmanniana gets A LOT taller, reported to 85m in the Western Caucasus Biosphere Reserve - if correct, that's by far the tallest tree in Europe, and the second-tallest Abies in the world, after A. procera (89m).

Tallest A. nordmanniana planted in Britain is 47m, it's not that far from where I live so high time I went to get a photo of it. Not easy to get a pic though as it is rather surrounded by a whole lot of 55-58m Douglas-firs (so also doesn't look anything like as tall as it is!).

"Of course our western Sitka spruce is the world's champ. At one point the tallest measured was 286, but I think I read somewhere that they recently found one over 300'"

One in the Carmanah Valley on Vancouver Island is 95m, and two in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park are 96m (one of them 96.7m). Fairly sure that's over 300 feet [digs out calculator . . . yes, 317], and they've all been known about for quite a while.

Of other very tall spruces, Picea spinulosa is reported to 65m in Bhutan, and P. smithiana to 60m, but those are very old reports and probably not verifiable.

Resin

jonnyb:

Yes, a good method. But you need level ground. I guess you could turn the protractor upside down and measure the other angle, the length of the downward sloping line, and then construct something other than a right triangle, and get results that way.

My method is not as accurate, but it is a bit more flexible. Often the problem is that I cannot, in a forest, and often on sloping ground, get a good sight of the top from any specific distance and/or from any one direction--does that make sense??

Well, what I do is find some point about 75 feet or so away where I can see a good portion of the trunk, and then go up to the tree and find, or place a mark at some specific small height that I can measure reasonably closely--something like 7.5 feet, or 10 feet or something. Then I go back to this first observation point and holding up a stick with marks on it, or sometimes just estimating, find another point up on the tree that is double the measured distance, say 15 or 20 feet, respectively. Then I will try to sight up double that distance, now 30 or 40 feet.

Often at this stage of the process I find I am too close to the tree to get a good perspective, so I will move to some point somewhat further away, sometimes because of sight obstructions in a different direction, and then try to sight up again and find 60 or 80 feet, and so on. With really tall trees I may do this two or three times from different directions entirely, and in some instances I have found final observation points very far away--two hundred yards or so when possible. When I can do that, I can usually get better estimates.

One of the difficulties is trees with broad crowns--with these trees is especially important to get as far away as possible to see just what is the top for the final estimate. With spruce trees with a single leader at the top, it is a little easier. I often have an opportunity to check myself with trees up to 100 feet tall because I do timber cutting and logging and can measure on the ground trees I have estimated. With trees up to 100 feet tall I would say I am usually accurate to something like + or - 6 or 7 feet. With trees of 150 feet tall, it seems my margin of error is about 10 feet or so. But with the really tall trees the only check I have had is an occasional tree I have estimated and then found out was actually measured.

And my confidence in myself and this method with really tall trees is a bit limited. My favorite grove of tall Norway spruce trees is the one near Glady, WV. I have visited this grove 6 or 8 times, and each time I try to estimate the height of these trees, I keep coming up with something like 160 feet. But I really think this is too tall--based on their age and growth rate, I figure between 140 and 150. Many years ago I got permission from the owner--Westvaco paper company--to go and cut down a few trees and do some measuring. But I couldn't get myself to cut down any of the really best trees to measure. But I did, very accurately, determine the age--they were planted in 1932. I had guessed closer to 1940.

I got some seedlings also and have two of them planted in front of our new house near Winchester, VA in the traditional position of "bride and groom" trees. The climate here is very different from where the grove is, but they are doing surprisingly well. This grove is of what seems to me to be an exceptional strain and it probably should be used as a seed source for NS planted in similar climates here in the US. I have visited many, many groves and collected lots and lots of seed, but this stand "stands out." The cones are of a color and texture, etc. very different from all other stands I have seen. Most of the spruce planted during that period were from the German Black Forest. This stand seems very different. There may be records of the seed source hidden away somewhere, but I have not taken on the task of trying to dig them up.

Well, I did get off the topic of measuring here a bit!!

--Spruce

Spruce,

I think you have a simpler way. Just get a 45 degree angle (maybe just 1/4" plywood or some Luan plywood, anything just a 45 degree triangle. Now if you start at the tree and set a stake out at 100 feet...or one every fifty feet and use a line level to get it level. At 100 feet sight along the hypotenuse of the triangle at a spot in the tree (as you said). Now you know where 100 feet high is. Less than 100 feet shift along the string until you hit the height. The length of the distance along the string where you zero in on the tree top, or branch or whatever is always equal to the height of whatever you are aiming at. Higher than 100 feet, more string, more stakes. Those little line levels are only a couple of bucks. If you want to get sophisticated or like toys get one of those electronic laser levels that beep when you are set level, They must have plumb levels on them and I bet you could set up your "height site" right on the electronic level or even set up a scope like on a transit set at 45 degrees....or really professional set up the electronic level with a site that is set at a horizontal and then can site up to the top of the tree or any where you want to measure, stick it in the ground and simply measure back to the tree, house, flag pole or whatever the heck else you want to measure.

I think we are on to something here.

I have always been interested in measuring trees--I started when I was about 7 years old. In those days I just measured the diameter, but I was always more interested in their height. I applaud the AFA champion trees program, but I have never liked their formula--a combination of diameter, height, and crown spread--for determining the champion. By far the most weight is given to diameter, and with the addition of a factor for crown spread, many of the champion trees are stubby things, often with double or triple trunks and/or short trunks with very large limbs close to the ground. To me a tree is most impressive if it is very tall. If they had just one list to compile, for me it would be a list of the tallest tree of each species. But, of course, the redwoods and giant sequoias with their combination of great height and great diameter are by far the most impressive.

Anyway, maybe our recent posts here will encourage some more amateurs like us to get out there and measure the height--approximately--of lots of trees. Near the beginning of the AFA program there were some wildly erroneous numbers for the heights of some of their champion trees--some people were using methods far more flawed than my own. Now they have professional foresters do the measuring with some good equipment. I think that now for most of their champion trees they have dates of the measurement--if it is relatively recent, the numbers are probably fairly good.

I have written a little essay on "big trees" that I would like to share, but it is about 15 pages long and inappropriate, I guess, for posting here.

--Spruce

"basic....Quite a change has occurred in the past 5 years as the "Millions" of Eastern Hemlocks native to the area are mostly dead!"

I'm sorry to hear that, but really not all that surprised. During our drive on Blue Ridge Prkwy through western N. Carolina you could see sections of dead trees that I later realized were Hemlocks. What a damn shame. BTW, Conifer, did you ever make it to Bryson City to identify this tree:
{{gwi:406033}}

Spruce, your method of measuring requires that you maintain the same distance to the tree or the angle will change and the estimate will be off. If you use the 45 degree triangulation moving from one location to another for access would not matter as long as you can sight your previous mark and keep evrything level.

Say you sight up to a point and then measure the distance, next you move to a new vantage point. Spotting up to the same point at the same angle (45 degress) has to get you back to the same elevation and then you proceed up from there. If you don't get back to the same point at the same elevation I don't think anything will work without some trigonometry.

I am going to rent a transit to put up a small fence in the Spring and if I can find one with a protractor I can try this out.

Jon

Another easy way I've used is similar to the others -- just mark off a highly-visible, thin line on the trunk at a measured distance, say 10 ft above ground, then move far enough away to get the whole tree in a digital pic. With the pic, it's then an easy job to put into an image program that has grids (like Paint). The proportion of the total height to the "known" 10 ft (according to the grid) then gives the total height. You can also get the branch spread from this. Of course, this method can be difficult or impossible in a densely forested area.

The large E Sycamore on my lot yields ~110' ft tall & 85' spread, and a nearby E. white pine ~100 ft. As an aside, the E. sycamore hasn't put on any height in 5 yrs -- the top gets shredded each yr by summer thunderstorms (anthracnose also hurts it), but it is spreading outward. Since the sycamore has no upwind protection, it may have reached a practical limit on its height.

That method doesn't work too well, as the camera is not equidistant or at an equal angle from all parts of the tree.

One other point to beware (particularly with trees with broad crowns) is that a branch sticking out towards you can give a 'false top' which looks to be much higher than the real top, giving greatly inflated heights.

Resin

resin:

Thanks for the tall tree information. Interesting that the Nordmann is reported to grow so tall. And interesting about the Sitka spruce in Prairie Creek SP. I had spend a fair amount of time there and saw some wonderful Sitka spruce there, but I am surprised that one there is so tall.

The oldest Norway spruce here, that I have seen and have some halfway reliable information about the probable ages of, is about 180 years. I am sure there were trees planted earlier, but I don't have any specific information and haven't seen them.

The oldest forest planting, I am fairly sure, is the "Rothkugel" east on the town of Bartow in West Virginia, on the national forest there. This was not planted as a pure stand, and the Norway spruce are growing in a mixed hardwood stand. They were planted in 1907 on an area that was logged and then burned. They were planted with black locust--all gone now--and European Larch, of which there are a few scattered individuals and groups remaining. I think what happened is most of the planted trees were overwhelmed by the growth of brush and weeds, before they became tall enough to compete effectively.

There is no evidence of any of the NS trees dying in this stand--there are some people over here who think NS is not long lived, but these trees are now over 100 years old and seem very youthful. These trees are scattered and in small groups because of factors during their establishment, not because of any subsequent mortality.

Anyway, the NS are "head and shoulders" above everything else, and the last time I was there and tried to estimate their height--about 10 years ago--I thought about 140 feet. And they seemed to be growing at about 6 or maybe 8 inches per year. I am not sure how well that growth rate will be sustained. But these trees are growing in a very ordinary soil--I would guess a class 3 forest soil. If they were on a class 2 soil their growth would be significantly faster. And to my eye--and I really have to guess based on a combination of characteristics I can observe--these may not be a particularly good strain. The stand near Glady, WV I describe in an earlier entry here already has taller trees, even though it is about 25 years younger. At Glady the soil is also just a class 3 soil, but the trees seem to me to be of a superb strain for fast growth in that area.

The only stands of NS I know of growing on a class 2 soil are the two on my own timberland, and one of those two stands seems to me to be of a excellent strain for fast growth, and the other is not bad. The better trees are averaging growth of 28 inches per year, in spite of the frequent weevil attacks. It is about 35 years since they reached the baseline height of 4.5 feet, and the tallest trees are now 85 feet tall. According to growth curves developed at SUNY Syracuse, their present growth rate will continue for at least another 15 years, but based on my observations at Glady, there will be a slowing not too long after that--I would guess in an additional 10 years or so. Anyway, If I live to be 95 (my father made 98), I will see these trees up to about 140 feet or so.

--Spruce

Good luck, hope you make it!

Over here, lifespan is typically 150-200 years in drier lowland sites, but probably capable of 300+ in cooler, moister sites. In the native range, ages over 400 are known.

Fastest sustained growth rate I'm aware of in Britain is 37m in 60 years. For comparison, P. sitchensis has reached the same height in 40 years.

Resin

basic....I came thru there last Sunday but not in the "down town sector" as I was on US 19 by-pass. I'll make it a point to on the next trip.

Spruce.....I've seen the NWS at Bartow but didn't have time for a through inspection....They were certainly impressive!...I did manage to "obtain" a few seedling Abies balsamea at Blister Run just west of Bartows sister city Durbin.

Conifers, and any others interested:

The NS trees at the Rothkugel forest are worth seeing for a NS enthusiast. Unfortunately there is just a very small turnout for parking, and I always feel a bit uncomfortable leaving my car alone there. But there is a house just across the way, so anyone wanting to do "harm" may think twice, knowing he/she may be observed.

Anyway, as you start up the trail you will be in a kind of stream valley ravine. There are some really nice trees there, but if you want to really explore the "grove," it is good to go all the way up and then turn to the right and circle back to go around the top of the ravine and explore the rather extensive flat on top. There are wonderful NS groups up there and it is there you will find the European larch trees.

You can also get up on this large flat area by scrambling across the ravine and up the other side--this can be a bit of an athletic exercise if you pick the wrong spot to cross.

Anyway, if one wants to really take a bit of time and really explore/enjoy the Rothkugel, give yourself two hours at least--three hours with a picnic would be best. The trees can be best seen when the leaves are off the hardwoods, but I can imagine when the leaves are turning, it can be a spectacular time to be there.

If anyone is interested I can give directions to the grove near Glady. But this is not an especially attractive grove, unless you can just focus on the specific trees and get a bit of a view up into the towering tree tops. The grove is very narrow, is on a steep hillside with just a narrow area near the bottom where the slope is moderate. And it was originally planted with the trees 6 X 6, sometimes closer, so the grove is choked with dead and dying overtopped trees. And a few years ago one section of this grove had a terrible windstorm come through, knocking out the tops of a number of the best trees--ugly. But for any really diehard NS enthusiast, seeing this is a "must." It gives a good idea of the kind of potential NS has as a forest planting. And, it shows how effectively NS trees express dominance in a densely planted stand.

--Spruce