What is your project Tom or would you prefer to be known as +oM ? Is this land you and (more people with "tree interests" bought for a retirement "zone". Is it what? A place to wander? That would be #2 question.

Thanks man,

Dax

That's a good question, Dax. I wouldn't mind building a house there some day, though I'm told by my wife that that's not likely. It doesn't really matter to me, as long as we can reforest the area, and enjoy the existing woods. Probably put a trailer or yurt or something up there one of these days. Basically, we just needed a place to grow trees. There's a fairly large, perfectly circular natural clearing surrounded by "cedars" (Thuja o.). I can definitely see a nice big fire pit going in here. Would also like to build a shed at some point, but that costs money, so it's going to have to come later. Our main priority was to plant trees, and that we've already begun.

+oM

Sweet. Your trees will go in like butter now. Great soil composition. I have the exact same here.

ttul,

Dax

Cool Dax. Yes, putting the shovel into great soil is a real pleasure. The land is in S. Oconto County (WI) if anyone's familiar. Only a few miles north of here, there is an abrupt changeover to extremely rocky, sandy soil, the rocks actually being massive boulders and exposed bedrock of precambrian granite and basalt. The Nicolet National Forest begins there. In contrast, where we are, it's still in the ag. belt due to rich, fertile soils underlain primarily by limestone. I love all the Northwoods, but I specifically wanted to end up with land in this slightly more southerly zone due to my love for white cedar (Thuja) which is at its' best in this area. Additionally, whereas the glaciers left the land very flat in some areas, in this area, they left LOTS of hills and valleys. And while I said this zone is still suited for agriculture, there is a great deal of forest, much more than where I live, in Appleton.

I'm not lying when I say it's just plain perfect for what I like!

+oM....or Tom, it don't matter!

Planting in an existing alfalfa field. I can only dream. Hank

Pictures Tom! I want to see some White Cedars.

Dax

Tom:

Tell me more about your white cedar--how fast/large it grows and what it is like in a forest of these trees.

Also, you mentioned your white pine. How is it growing? I don't have any familiarity with forest stands of white cedar, but next to Norway spruce, my favorite conifer for a forest stand in the eastern half of the country is white pine.

--Spruce

Re: white cedar:

Truly wonderous places are the naturally occurring groves of these! Seeing this all my life makes me just plain resent all the dumb cultivars of this plant. Okay, I DO like some of the cultivars, and they have great usage in landscaping, but these are trees!

When young, they are most typically perfectly straight, single-stemmed, and have tiered branch arrangement not unlike a spruce or fir. As they age, due to branch differentiation and growth, considerable filling in takes place so that they become very dense. More or less pure stands are very common. In favorable conditions, this is not a slow grower in youth. At least a foot is common. They do have some shade tolerance, and when overtopped , they can slowly bide their time till some calamity befalls the overarching foliage. For this reason, they are considered climax species in some forest associations. Having said all this, it is rare to find really tall ones. I think the state record, as far as that which is still standing, is something like 85 ft.

If you've seen young, unsheared plicata or GG, these are far more similar than different. Aroma of crushed foliage is heavenly.

The white pine on my land range from young saplings all the way up to perhaps 80-90 footers. There are, for some reason, many WP's here that have two leaders, starting maybe 30 ft. up. My guess is either very careless logging or a storm in the past that snapped a lot of them off. Luckily, not all exhibit this deformity.

Would someone please patiently explain to me how to post photos? We've got a digital camera (Again....long story) and now, with this land, I'd really like to be able to share some pics.

I truly appreciate your interest in these groves of white cedar. It was prerequisite with me in my land search that I end up with some of this feature, or that I have it nearby to allow natural spread onto my land. It's been said that the air is always cooler and moister within these groves, and already this year, we've verified it for ourselves. This is said to be due to their high rate of evapotranspiration.

An interesting aside: The DNR Forester stated that most of the WC groves we see in this part of WI got their start during the dustbowl years of the 1930s! It seems the seeds require soil temps of around 85 degrees F. and that the conditions during those years were right for providing this. It seems especially odd to have this be the case for such a tree that seems to signal cool, moist condititons. Nature is truly full of such paradoxes.

+oM

Tom:

Thanks for the description. I have seen the white cedar forests from the road a couple of times when driving through the UP of Michigan, but I never got out of the car to take a real look. 85' tall is a real tree, but not really towering like white pines or NS.

As for the forks in white pine--I am not sure what causes them. Sometimes birds landing on the new elongating leaders breaks them and that can lead to a fork. Sometimes it is some malfunction that causes a double terminal bud. I had a lot of that in my pine (and NS groves), but mine forked at all different heights. Many of mine were fairly close to the ground so it was easy to cut one side off--this is where I started my copper fungicide experiments. Others were high up and I climbed my trees for many years to cut these out. In the end I was going up as much as 60 feet, but finally when I had the lower limbs pruned off to about 15 or 18 feet, I gave up on going any higher. I got almost all of the forks out of my white pines, but in the NS groves I missed quite a lot. If you have any inclination at all do climb these trees to eliminate these defects, let me know and I can give you some good advice, including safety advice. It is really not hard, and really can be a lot of fun--climbing up into a completely different kind of green world, swaying in the treetops in a wonderful breeze!!

Unfortunately most of these forked trees eventually split in storms, both in white pine and NS. Strangely, the forked red pines never split--at least not at the fork itself. Sometimes in a really violent gusty storm one side can go one way and the other the other way, producing really terrible breaking forces, but with red pine, one side, very rarely, will break from the force about 5 feet above the fork.

As for posting the digital pictures. Send Dax an e-mail (he may not see your post here). He is a really sweet guy and would like nothing better than to help a fellow tree lover learn to post pictures. He tried to help me, but I haven't gotten the time to get a camera and start learning.

--Spruce

TomTerrific,

Interesting paradox.

Signing up for photobucket.com is easy and now they even have an "edit" feature which I found to be nice.

Right now I'm typing in GW's Message box. AT any place within this box I can drop a series/string of numbers or letters that is called an "HTML CODE" Although written on photobucket.com as "HTML Code" under any photo you've UPLOADED which is a feature to bring your photos you "uploaded" from your camera onto your computer (or on a disc). Now...

You set up your account.... same as anything you've ever done and then you can "Create" new "Folders" again - same as anything you've ever done, etc ---

Upload your photos to your folders that you've given names too, I have a folder called Garden Web for example and folders for all the conifer collections I've photographed, again, etc - - - -

Now, your photos have appeared on your computer screen... under each photo lay 4 "CODES" one is the "HTML Code" as written..........SELECT that one. It's third one down.

Insert in this Message box:
Bang a picture appears under any text or however you want to drop this coded computer language into here.

If you can't figure it out, email KEN!

lol,

Dax

Thnx Daxman! I don't usually consider myself an especially stupid person, but when it comes to 'puters, I come close;^) I'll try rigging that up when I'm in the right mood. Pretty funny considering my older son is a very talented and successful programmer!

Anyway, gab I'm good at. Here's an update: My son (The computer whiz one) ordered 4 Green Giants and 3 Dawn Redwoods. These will be going in this spring to add a bit of variety to the NS planting. Actually, though I've no intention of making this property in any sense a formally landscaped one, I'm going to be putting in three little pods of redstemmed dogwood at the two corners by the road and the one behind the old farmhouse the neighbor guy lives in. The metasequoias will be placed in arrangment with these, one per pod. That's just fun stuff. Will be interesting to test the hardiness of these GG's and DR's up there. I "think" they'll do okay. Both my son and I have wanted to work with these two for some time, but neither of us have room in our yards for any more large-growing trees. We've got the room up there ;^)

+oM