Forestry

Purchase Area Master Gardener Association

(PAMGA)

Forestry

February 23, James Armstrong and Stephen Rogers from the Kentucky Division of Forestry visited the class. They brought specimens from various trees found throughout Kentucky and gave practical advice about determining the age of trees.

Using a "cookie," a cross-section of a tree, Stephen Rogers shows the boys how much (or maybe how little) this tree has grown in 13 years, the age of many of the students in the class. The foresters brought a variety of cookies for the boys to examine and compare how climactic factors like drought and flooding, as well as forest events, such as fires, can impact tree growth. The stacks of cookies (pictured at right) enabled the class to see and feel differences in wood grains and aromas. The boys also learned determining a tree's age (by counting rings) is not an exact science

but more like a good guess. After trying their hand and eye at counting the rings on a variety of trees found throughout Kentucky they compared numbers and learned they were right on target with the rings counted by the professional foresters.

February 23

Student entry

Today we had two Kentucky foresters come in and talk about trees. First off we talked about how trees get damaged but they cover up their scars. Trees can be damaged and have bad wood by having a building built by the sapling and when the tree grows up its wood will lean. Other ways the wood becomes bad is by growing on a slope which makes the tree lean, insect infestation causes holes, a broken branch makes a crack in the wood, and last a fire can make the tree crack and have holes in the wood.

After that, the foresters talked about the age of trees. You can count the age of a tree by the rings of course and that's about it, but if you didn't want to cut down the tree you can use an increment bore. An increment bore is used to make a hole in the tree and a metal rod goes in and pulls out the piece of wood that has the ring parts in it. Also you want to go as low as possible on the tree to take the sample in order to get the best results. He showed us how to do it but the cookie, which is a slice of a tree, he showed was cracked. Finally, we were given pine seedlings to take home and plant.

Purchase Area Master Gardener Association, 2705 Olivet Church Road, Paducah, Ky 42001 270/554-9520 FAX 270/554-8283 www.pamga.org