FUN FORESTRY FACTS
Why do leaves change color? - When leaves appear green, it is because they contain an abundance of chlorophyll. Chlorophyll masks other pigment colors. As summer turns to autumn, decreasing light levels cause chlorophyll production to slow. However, the decomposition rate of chlorophyll remains constant, so the green color will fade from the leaves. At the same time, anthocyanin production in leaves increases, in response to surging sugar concentrations. Leaves containing primarily anthocyanins will appear red. Leaves with good amounts of both anthocyanins and carotenoids will appear orange. Leaves with carotenoids but little or no anthocyanins will appear yellow. In the absence of these pigments, other plant chemicals also can affect leaf color. An example includes tannins, which are responsible for the brownish color of some oak leaves.
How many trees does a person use? - The average American uses about 749 pounds of paper every year and 95% of the houses built are done so using wood. That means that the average person uses the equivalent of a 100-foot high, 18 inches in diameter tree each year for their wood and paper needs.
Why is wood the best building product? - The average single-family home (2,000 sq.ft) can contain 16,900 board feet of lumber and up to 10,000 square feet of panel products. Inch to inch, wood is 16 times more efficient as an insulator than concrete, 415 times as efficient as steel, and 2,000 times as efficient as aluminum.
What types of products are made from wood? - There are an estimated 5,000 different products made from trees. Apart from the well known products such as lumber, paper, and garden mulch, trees are responsible for other day to day items such as clothing, carpeting, and even toothpaste.
How many leaves do trees have? - An average, large healthy tree could have about 2,000 leaves. During 60 years of its life, such a tree could grow and shed approximately 3,600 pounds of leaves. Those leaves return about 70 percent of the nutrients to the soil.
Tallest Tree - The acknowledged tallest tree species currently known to man is considered to be the Californian redwood (Sequoia sempervirens). The tallest known redwood is located in the Hombodlt Redwood State Park in California, and is measured to be 378.1 feet tall.
Largest Tree - There are various ways to determine the "largest" of anything. This gets more complicated with living organisms where different forms of reproduction, such as cloning, can come into play. For the record, the largest single stemmed tree, by volume, is the General Sherman Giant Sequoia located in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park. It is estimated to have 52,500 cubic feet of material, with an annual wood growth of an amount equal to a 60 foot tree of average proportion. At its base its measures 36.5 feet in diameter(109 feet in circumference), and its largest branch is almost 7 feet thick. On the other side of the debate is a Quaking Aspen (Populous tremuloides) grove located in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah. Aspens will often reproduce through a form of cloning known as vegetative reproduction, where an original (ortet) will send out lateral roots, which will in turn sprout clones of the tree (ramets). Because all the trees in the grove will be genetically the same and are interconnected via the root system, it can be argued that, although visually separate trees, the grove is one large organism. This grove has been named Pando and covers roughly 106 acres with its 47,000 stems, weighing in at an estimated 13 million lbs.
Oldest Tree - The oldest tree currently living is named "Methuselah" and is acknowledged to be 4,765 years old. In order to protect it from vandalism and trophy seekers, the National Park Service has not disclosed its exact location, other than it resides in Bryce Canyon National Park in the White Mountains in southeastern California. The oldest living tree in record was located in what is now Great Basin National Park. Named "Prometheus," the specimen was accidentally cut down by a doctoral student in 1964. It has since been aged at approximately 4,900 years.
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