 |
|
|
|||||
|
|
March 23, 2006 Tree Offers Look at N.D. History North Dakota State University has gained a slice of state history. It’s the fulfillment of a promise the owner of some Cass County land made about three decades ago. In the 1970s, when Floyd Monteith sold land south of Leonard, he asked the buyer, Carter Powell, to donate a cross section of a particular bur oak to NDSU if Powell ever cut the tree down. Monteith was a North Dakota State Horticultural Society member, and the bur oak was a state champion, meaning it was the largest of its kind in the state. Powell agreed to Monteith’s request. Through the years, the tree deteriorated, and another bur oak replaced it as state champion. When Powell, now living in Kansas, became concerned about the tree’s failing health last summer, he remembered his promise and called Joe Zeleznik, NDSU Extension Service forester. Zeleznik found the tree’s top was dead and parts of the trunk were hollow. Plus, the Sheyenne River had eroded the riverbank where the tree stood, and the oak was in danger of falling into the water. He offered to cut it down. “With the river, who knows how long the tree could last,” Zeleznik said. So on a bone-chillingly cold Saturday in February, Zeleznik, NDSU graduate student Jesse Beckers and Fargo forester Scott Liudahl used a chain saw to fell the tree. They also cut two slices from the trunk – one for research at NDSU and the other for Powell. Each slice, called a cookie, was 4 to 6 inches thick and 4 feet across, and weighed 250 to 300 pounds. To make the NDSU cookie easier to handle, Zeleznik later cut it into two slices. “I’ve cut down a lot of trees, but never one of this magnitude,” said Beckers, whose master’s work is on the fire history of Ponderosa pine in the Badlands. “I think it’s a real neat opportunity to study an older tree.” Someone speculated in the 1970s that, based on the bur oak’s size and growth, it was 500 years old. “I think it’s a little more than 400 years old, but we’re going to find out,” Zeleznik said. The first step is drying the cookies. Zeleznik will keep the slices submerged in a child’s wading pool filled with a mixture of polyethylene glycol and water for several months. That’s to prevent the wood from shrinking and cracking. The polyethylene glycol should replace the water in the cookies’ cell walls. “The technique works OK on most wood, but I’m not sure it’s going to work with bur oak,” he said. Once the water is out of the slices, he’ll let them dry. Then the process is a matter of “simply sanding them really well and counting the rings,” he said. He also plans to use the cookies to analyze flooding in the Leonard area. Marks called flood scars will show when flooding occurred and how it affected the tree’s growth. “I think there’s some real scientific value to the samples,” he said. The slices will find a permanent home in the NDSU Plant Sciences Department. Powell hopes to salvage as much wood from the rest of the tree as possible. Bur oak are native to North Dakota. The largest concentrations are in the Sully’s Hill area near Devils Lake and the Pembina Gorge in northeastern North Dakota, but they grow throughout the state, according to Zeleznik. State champion status is based on tree height, crown spread and trunk circumference, which is measured at 4.5 feet from the ground. The current state champion bur oak is near Mayville. It is 83 feet tall, and has a circumference of 12 feet 4 inches and a crown spread of 65 feet. In comparison, the tree near Leonard had a circumference of 11 feet 6 inches. The North Dakota Forest Service designates trees as state champions. Landowners who have a tree they think is champion material can contact the Forest Service, which has its headquarters in Bottineau. The Forest Service sends one or two specialists to check whether the tree measures up to the title. ### Source:
Joe Zeleznik, (701) 231-8143, jzelezni@ndsuext.nodak.edu
|
Market Advisor: |
|
North Dakota State University |
