One question I would ask Ann is how the property was maintained in the past 10 - 20 years. This would give some information about what recent practices have left the woods as they currently are. If you like the way they are, you could just keep doing the same. To my mind it's more complicated than that. Yes, I like the woods the way they are (and I don't know much about what's been done in the past years except I think relatively nothing). However, even though I 'like' the woods now, I do not know if their current condition and if doing nothing is best for the long term health of the woods. I truly feel that we are the stewards of this land, not the owners, and I asked this question to try to find out how best to care for the land and return it as much as possible to its native state. One thing that is obvious to me from the discussion above is that I need to learn more. You all use terms that I am not sure of, and differentiate between bottom land woodlands andother woodlands, and talk about disturbance ecology...I need to learn more. I assume you call my area bottom land because its along the river? For what its worth, someone mentioned an overabundance of maples - that is not the problem here. Maples don't grow on our side of the river, too alkaline. Box elders do, and we do have some box elders, but my impression (which may be wrong) is that those are native. There are not a lot of them. Do any of you have suggestions for good informative books that would help me learn about forest ecology? Or is this such a huge topic that I would need to go back to school :) ? We do get erosion of the bank. We also get flooding pertty much every spring (and sometimes, such as this year, during the summer too). If the flooding is only spring thaw flooding, it doesn't seem to affect the plants too much. However if it is a summer flood, essentially all of the undergrowth is killed. It will be back next year, but for now there is not that beautiful green understory that the pictures above show. This discussion is interesting to me. As I say, I need to learn more, but you are giving me ideas of WHAT I need to learn. Ann

I know that it has been a lot warmer up here this year than in Colorado so this may just be some encouragement for some of you. And, I'm only going to make one more post on this thread because, it really felt like spring here today. The thermometer said 64°F, the warmest day so far this year. It has already started to rain so . . . it isn't all sun and lawn violets. But yes there are, at least 6 lawn violets blooming in my yard! And, in just about the warmest and most sheltered location hereabouts, I discovered the snowberry bushes were leafing out! Steve And life gets more exciting with each passing day And love is either in your heart or on its way. Don't you know that it's worth every treasure on earth To be young at heart. For as rich as you are, it's much better by far To be young at heart. And if you should survive to 105 Look at all you'll derive, out of being alive. Then here is the best part You have a head start If you are among the very young at heart.

As everyone knows I love to travel and especially around our own country. In March we went to Fredericksburg, TX for a week along with our friends who have a toy hauler 5th wheel. We had our motorcycles with us and rode all over the countryside. We also went to the LBJ National Historic Park, which is so interesting. In the middle of June we headed to the Pacific Northwest and toured around Oregon, Washington, Idaho. I also got to meet up with 6 members of the KT. We saw several National Parks along the way. We ended up at Teton National Park in Wyoming. In October I flew to Cincinnati and did a driving tour with Murraysmom. We were on the road for 10 days and drove over 2,200 miles. We got to meet with 10 KTer's. Murraysmom and I had never met before and had a wonderful time. Just last month we went to Galveston to see MarilynC and also the surrounding area. I had a get together in my motor home and enjoyed the company of 5 KTer's while we were in the Galveston area. We also got to visit with RuthieG on our way to Galveston and hopefully will see her again in late January. We will be heading out again mid January heading to Florida to see my folks and other relatives I have there. Hopefully I will get to see some more KT friends that I have also seen over the past few years. There are many places I still haven't been to but hopefully will have a good 10 years to venture out and enjoy our great country and all it has to offer. Being retired we don't have to wait for a holiday to enjoy our motor home. I just wish I could keep him on the road longer. He is a homing pigeon and says he needs to go home after a month to six weeks on the road. My ideal way to travel is to go 400 miles and set up, then take day trips to see everything of interest in a 150 mile radius. Then move another 400 miles and do it over again. It also saves on gas to do this since you are not returning home so often and then having to go back to where you were and start over. With diesel prices being anywhere from $3.69 to 4.29 a gallon and only getting 7-8 miles to a gallon it cost about $288.00 a day on the road figuring a 400 mile day. I tell my husband it is only money and we can't take it with us. We earned it and we want to enjoy it and spend it during our lifetime. If there is anything left over the kids are welcome to it. I hope all of you that want to travel get to do so. We live life only once so enjoy it to the fullest.

"One study showed about 6% of the water in the leaves were from fog in some trees. " Right, so the notion that they "need" this source of moisture is romanticized pseudoscience. Just because something happens, doesn't mean that this is the cause of everything else that happens. If they could merely subsist on the fog, then why haven't they reached 600', 700', or 800'? In fact since their range goes up to 2500', the right magical fog clearly exists at that altitude, too, and trees at ground level should be able to reach 2800' at least! LOL. Any moisture loving plant can grow better, or faster in a moist climate. Duh on that. But to specifically say that these trees can only reach that height because the fog is the _only _reason they can reach that height, is the height of absurdity! If you plotted standard deviations of soil moisture and drought with tree heights around the world - guess what you'd find? The places with plentiful, consistent soil moisture and rainfall are going to have the taller trees...and the places without tropical storms the really tallest trees. The sugi of Japan top out a bit above 200' - as would the redwoods of California if they had monsoon thunderstorms and typhoons to deal with. And guess what happens in climates with very consistant moisture that don't have the tropical waves and ridging/troughing - well they are maritime climates and by definition will have fog. The fog is associative, not causative, for the tall redwood trees. The only competition is Eucalyptus regnans, which, guess what, comes from moderately elevated areas with consistent rainfall and atmospheric moisture. (my brief google research suggests Tasmania is not known for thick summer fogs, but it is certainly wet, and w/o California's summer dry season. In fact, its native range _doesn't_ include the NW coast which is probably the foggiest part of Tasmania.) And guess what their upper limit is in spite of being morphologically completely different from conifers? About 400 ft! The fact is you won't find many other places in the world that have soil moisture as consistent as redwood coast, and the right temperature parameters, and the right absence of storms, lightning and high winds. But if you did, they could also reach 400' there. This post was edited by davidrt28 on Fri, Jan 2, 15 at 23:59