Talk:Tree

What color are they??

Trees are all sorts of different colours!! Many of the usual ones are green leaved, with brownish trunks. Some trees, such as the Gabbly Tree, which is pink, purple, and white in Colour. the Invisise Tree, located in central Australia, is a Blue colour in the Summer. In Winter time, it turns a burnt red. Very very interesting.

Trees are similar to people???

There's a part in the article that says 'Trees are similar to people. Both can withstand massive amounts of some types of damage and survive, but even small amounts of certain types of trauma can result in death'.

I don't think the previous is a good analogy or comparison. There are lots of living creatures (you could say insects mainly, mammals, reptiles, etc.) that have those characteristics, not only humans. And besides, to what kind of damage is it referring to? On second thought, humans are physiologically very fragile...Anyways, the phrase just makes you wonder what it's trying to mean, like, some things get to us but some don't, and that's the similarity? ???

Image 4 found wanting

'Trees after an overnight snowfall, in early morning light.' does nothing for the article - can someone find a more useful image which actually assists in understanding some aspect of the article? cheers Geopersona (talk) 06:08, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Stoutest/Largest Trees addition

Stoutest tree:

A Kauri tree (Te Matua Ngahere) has a dbh of 5.33 m. Measurements at [1]. It should be included on the list.

I have also been looking for data to support the unreferenced Alerce entry, but the largest measurement I can find has a diameter of ~2.2 m in Argentina, e.g. [2].

Largest Tree:

Tāne_Mahuta, another Kauri, has a wood volume of 516 m^3, as measured by Dr Robert van Pelt (who considers it to be the 3rd biggest conifer after Sequoiadendron and Sequioa (see [3]). Should this be included in the largest tree list? Trunk volume was measured at 255 m^3, wood volume in the substantial branches an additional 261 m^3.

Foomanz (talk) 08:48, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Previous three section requests done. Keteleeria (talk) 12:59, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Morphology/physiology

The section "morphology" includes some aspects that belong to "physiology". I think that a new section should be opened, devoted to physiology, to segregate the pertinent material, and maybe expand it.--Auró (talk) 19:09, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Not Mono-phyletic?

I'm guessing, though I don't have a reference, that 'trees' are not a mono-phyletic group. (Based mainly on the fact, mentioned in Richard Dawkin's, 'The Greatest Show on Earth', that many 'trees' on Saint Helena are in fact hyper-trophied daisies.) Does anyone have a citation that explicitly states this? If so, it would be good to add it.86.134.117.67 (talk) 15:10, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

That is actually said in the section Classification, even twice: "A tree is a plant form that occurs in many different orders and families of plants." and "The tree form has evolved separately in unrelated classes of plants, in response to similar environmental challenges, making it a classic example of parallel evolution."Krasanen (talk) 09:17, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Come to think of it, it would be good to add something on the evolution of 'trees', as well. 86.134.117.67 (talk) 15:11, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Tree Age, Dual Stems & Volume

The Methuselah Tree would be 4843 this year according to the Wikipedia article on the subject which I believe to be accurate. The Prometheus Tree, also a Bristlecone, cut down in the mid-60's was 4844 at the time of cutting. Donald Greybill later analyzed the materials and found 4,862 to be a more likely number...both Scientists at the time and most since that time agree that Methuselah was 4,900 - 5,100 years old at the time it was cut based on growth patterns and the height at which the tree was cut and based on known growth rates in the harsh environment. SO its not clear to me if the original post is confusing the two trees, it is equally unclear that if the article is referring to Prometheus, why the age would not be above 4,900 years? Ref: NYT article 9/9/11. I have also read unconfirmed reports of a tree 5,000+ years old in the Schulman Grove.

The age of the Giant Sequoia at 3,266 refers to tree ring counts for a tree that was cut down in the Converse Basin approximately 120 years ago. The Muir Snag is estimated to have been 3,500 years old at the time of it's death which predates John Muir's discovery of the Tree in the mid 1870's. The Cleavland Tree which is actually the only Sequoia Tree I know of that is still alive with a possibility of being 3,266 years old is at the outside edge of the confidence interval as described by Dr. Nate Stephenson. Though he states there are probably 1,000 sequoia's that have not been cored for age that are much larger in diameter (and therefore have the possibility of being older) than the stump referred to in this article at 3,266.

Dr. Stephenson says the following about CBR26 - The Oldest sequoia mentioned in this article. "As a yardstick for interpreting results, I used the age and size of the longest-lived sequoia known -- a cut stump in Converse Basin, Giant Sequoia National Monument, designated CBR26 by its discoverers (R. Touchan and E. Wright of the University of Arizona's Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research). Touchan has precisely crossdated 3207 rings on the stump. It is missing much of its sapwood, so the outermost ring dates to 1834. However, the extensive logging of Converse Basin Grove occurred between 1893 and 1908. Thus, at least 59 years of sapwood are missing, and the tree therefore was at least 3266 years old when it was cut. (It is unlikely that the tree exceeded 3290 years old, including the time it took the tree to grow to the height sampled by Touchan and Wright.) The stump is relatively small: 5.8 m in diameter near ground level and 4.3 m in diameter at the cut surface 2.2 m above ground level. Even with sapwood and bark intact, the tree's diameter at 2.2 m above ground level was probably less than 5 m when it was cut, much smaller than any of the trees analyzed here (Table 3). While we will never know the volume of the living CBR26, it is clear that many hundreds of sequoias alive today (probably well over one thousand) are larger than CBR26 was before it was cut." Accordingly the trees age is somewhere between 3266 - 3290 at the time it was cut. and that was somewhere between 120 and 103 years ago. Date unknown.

So if the discussion of age refers to dead trees, we should be talking about Prometheus and the Muir Snag (or if the Muir Snag estimates are unreliable then the stump in Converse Basin.) Of course, then the issue becomes, whether to include the 47+ yrs or 120+ yrs from the date of the tree's destruction to the age of the trees? If it refers to trees still living then Methuselah and the Cleavland Tree would be the best candidates but the ages are wrong. Under any scenario the information currently posted is incorrect at worst and incomplete at best and should be revised.

Additionally there are volume and diameter data included in the article for the "Lost Monarch" which is a multi-stemmed tree. Whereas the Giant Sequoia data is all for single stemmed trees (Note: there are 1,000's of 2,3,& 4 stemmed Giant Sequoias.) This is an important distinction that should be stated clearly so that readers know which trees are a single organism and which ones are multi-stemmed.

Behold the following comment by Dr. Robert Van Pelt author of Forest Giants of Pacific Coast on the site nativetreesociety dot org

"For single stemmed trees the Sequoias have no peer. These are the trees I know of over 10 K cubic feet

Sequoiadendron 55,040 Sequoia 36,890 Agathis 18,250 Thuja 17,650 Eucalyptus 13,300 Pseudotsuga 12,320 Picea 11,920 Taxodium ~10K Adansonia ~10K

I do not think any others would make this list.

In terms of living biomass, remember that a tree like the General Sherman is 99 percent dead. Only the cambium, a very small amount of phloem and xylem, the leaves and fine roots are actually alive.

The Populus tremuloides (and P. tremula in Asia) clones are famous, but most people forget that Sequoia is often clonal - a grove of 7 or 8 giants would have more mass than the 47,000 stems of Utah's 'Pando' clone. Other, less well studied clones could be just as extensive (and ancient). Where I live there is evidence that certain clones of Acer circinatum or Rhododendron macrophyllum are 4-6,000 years old. These clones could now consist of enough stems to warrent inclusion in this list.

In terms of actual living mass, the mycelium of the Armelaria gallica that covers 15 hectares in Upper Michigan will probably beat any of the 'tree' contenders.

How unromantic."

This post addresses the volume & multi-stem issue addressed above.

For example the largest single stem of the Lost Monarch is approximately 34, 914 cu/ft according to Dr. Van Pelt.

Additionally it points out that the General Sherman is 55,040 cu.ft as opposed to the figure reported in the article. The figures in the article for the General Sherman come from Flint and Law's 2002 "To Find the Biggest Tree" in which they used pin and transit measurements. Dr. Van Pelt's measurements subsequent thereto used a Criterion RD-1000 Laser. Because the laser can get diameter measurements at infinitely more heights and from infinitely more angles, its volume data should be considered more accurate. Hence I would suggest use of the 55,040 volume.

AfterSeven (talk) 08:10, 30 April 2012 (UTC)