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Overview
"A book that easily doubles as reference and a source of reading pleasure. The illustrations are clear and the index is a good guide." — Wisconsin Library Bulletin.
"How long have trees been growing on earth?" "Will evergreens thrive in a city?" "Should different kinds of trees be planted along the same avenue?" Noted tree expert Rutherford Platt answers these and hundreds of other questions in this informative guide to trees and tree products.
Meticulously researched, brimming with fascinating facts, 1001 Questions Answered About Trees offers a highly readable compendium of data about numerous species throughout the world — from the stately American sugar maple, giant sequoia, and towering saguaro cactus to the Scotch pine, Australian eucalyptus, and Middle Eastern date palm.
With this book tree lovers will learn how to use such data as age, size, weight, and other features to identify trees; homeowners can find out what to plant and how to deal with tree pests and disease; and tourists can discover trees to look for in certain states. Readers will also find much information on conservation, tree products, famous trees, wood chemistry, and papermaking. There's even a selection of poems about trees.
Over 100 drawings and 21 photographs by the author illustrate this encyclopedic resource — an indispensable guide for students, conservationists, ecologists, and nature lovers of all ages.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780486167817 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Dover Publications |
| Publication date: | 04/07/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 352 |
| File size: | 10 MB |
| Age Range: | 10 Years |
Read an Excerpt
1001 Questions Answered About Trees
By Rutherford Platt
Dover Publications, Inc.
Copyright © 1987 Katherine Lampard, Rutherford H. Platt, Jr., Alexander D. Platt, Susan Platt and Barbara PlattAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-486-16781-7
CHAPTER 1
HISTORY AND FACTS
1. What is a tree? A tree is a perennial woody plant with three basic characteristics that distinguish it from all other plants. 1. Size: In maturity it is much bigger than all other plants. 2. Form: A typical tree has a single stem which bears branches a distance above the ground. 3. Way of life: Under natural conditions trees grow in stands (forests) which dominate their area of land. By the wood of their trunks, their fruits, and the special kind of environment they create, trees influence life on earth more than any other kind of plant.
2. How long have trees been growing on earth? The first definite evidence of trees on earth goes back 300 million years, to a time which geologists call the Devonian Period.
3. What is the record of the earliest known tree life on earth? A flash flood struck in the western Catskill Mountains, in upper New York State, in 1869, uprooting trees, carrying away bridges, causing the banks of Schoharie Creek to cave in. This exposed in the bed of the creek some tree stumps made of solid rock which aroused great curiosity. Later, while building the Gilboa Dam for the New York City water supply excavation penetrated deeper into the hillsides of the same area, and turned up many mysterious stumps.
4. What kind were those first trees on earth? They were unlike any types of tree growing on earth today. Each tree was a composition of a fern that had taken the form of a large tree, and a tree which bore a strange kind of seed. Thus, these first trees known to have grown on earth are called Eospermatopteris, a Greek word which says in English: Dawn-seed-fern.
5. How big were those first trees? The trunks averaged two feet in diameter and the trees were about 40 feet tall.
6. Where are the Eospermatopteris stumps to be seen? Some of them are in a roadside exhibit at Gilboa, New York. Others are in the New York State Museum at Albany.
7. When did trees like some on earth today first appear? Some 60 million years after the Eospermatopteris, forests of the Coal Age were luxurious and worldwide, and contained a number of different kinds of trees, with similarities to trees in our world. That was 240 million years ago.
8. How did we find out about the trees of the Coal Age? Lumps of coal and rock dug out of coal mines reveal countless impressions of parts of trees and other plants, such as leaves, stems, seeds, roots.
9. Would those trees of the Coal Age look familiar to us? Yes, in part. Some of the types have survived to our day but not as large trees. Some of those earlier types were trees with tall, straight, fluted trunks like columns of a Greek temple—related to the little horsetail plants of our day. Others were stocky with thick trunks covered with overlapping scales instead of bark—related to our clubmosses. The tallest tree of the Coal Age forests, although greatly outnumbered by the horsetail and clubmoss trees, was the most exciting innovation because it had real wood. It is named Cordaites from the Latin word for heart. The other trees did not have solid wood trunks; they were hollow or pithy, while Cordaites had wood and features like Auracaria, often seen as a house plant. It was probably the ancestor of the true pines.
10. Are any trees now living on earth the same kind as trees which grew in the Coal Age more than 200 million years ago? Near the close of the Coal Age two seed trees appeared, which we call cycad and gingko. The cycad is a palm- like tree which grows in Florida where it is known as comfort root and coontie, but it is more prominent in the southern hemisphere. A cycad can be seen in botanical gardens where it is known as sago palm. The gingko is a familiar tree of our big city streets and parks. (See Question 127.)
11. Did the Coal Age forests have any animal inhabitants? Yes. The principal inhabitants were giant salamanders and crocodiles, dragon flies with a 29-inch wing spread, enormous scorpions, spiders, and cockroaches 4 inches long.
12. How long have trees like those in the woods of eastern United States been growing on earth? Some hundred million years ago (in what geologists call the Upper Cretaceous period) a forest was growing on the west coast of Greenland with many trees like those of New England today.
13. What kind of trees grew in that Greenland forest? Sycamore heads the list. We can honor the name of sycamore as an original pioneer of the world's hardwood trees, according to the evidence. While some 30 million years slid by, the Greenland forest was enriched by poplar, willow, tulip tree, elm, hawthorn, hornbeam, sweet gum, juniper, sassafras, hickory and walnut.
14. Did our kind of trees first appear on earth in Greenland? No. That is only the earliest record that has turned up. There is a valid theory that the familiar trees of northeastern United States such as elm, maple, oak, poplar were originally associated in woodlands in what is now northeastern India, near Darjeeling. During unknown millions of years they traveled from there across China, the Bering Straits, and formed a great circumpolar forest around the Arctic Ocean. From there they spread southward into Europe and America. Their fossils, discovered in Greenland, are those of trees in the midst of their travels through the ages.
15. Where and when did our familiar trees first grow in the United States? The first record comes from the Potomac Valley, in Arundel County, Maryland. There a remarkable forest was growing 95 million years ago. That was only 5 million years after the sycamores in Greenland.
16. What trees were among these first families of Maryland? Most of the woods consisted of cycads, giant ferns, and the old Auracaria, the ancestor of the pines, but about 25 percent consisted of something sensationally new in trees. These were willow, poplar, oak, elm, sassafras, plus familiar accompaniments such as Virginia creeper, grape vines, and climbing bittersweet.
17. Did people live among those trees? No. Homo sapiens was not destined to appear on earth until about 94 million years after those trees were making the landscape lovely in Maryland. Those willows, poplars, and oaks were growing in this country even before the Rocky Mountains had been pushed up.
18. How much of the United States was covered by trees when the Pilgrims landed? There were 937 million acres of superb virgin forest. That included all territory except the Great Plains and some western desert areas.
19. What is "Virgin forest?" Primeval forest unchanged by man.
20. How much is left today of the original forest that was here when the first settlers came? About 5.4 percent. Most of that is in the National Park system.
21. What happened to the other 94.6 percent of the original forest? Man cut down and burned the virgin forest for homesteading and farming, and later for forest products. This stimulated forest fires, insects and pest attacks which quickened the destruction.
22. When did land clearing take place in the United States? The greatest period was in the 18th and 19th centuries, but it is not quite finished in our northwestern states. There the last remnants (containing Douglas fir, western hemlock, redwood, ponderosa pine) of the virgin forest outside of the National Parks are being felled today.
23. Does forest clearing stop at the United States—Canadian border? No. Roadbuilding and railroad extensions into the hitherto inaccessible forests of western Canada and Alaska are going on at a feverish rate, and the last of the incredibly tall virgin forests of North America are doomed, except those with government protection.
24. What is left of the virgin forests east of the Mississippi? Only a few specimens of old patriarchs of long- lived trees such as tulip tree and white oak. The forests of Indian and colonial days live only in legends and history.
25. What was the final chapter in the deforestation of the eastern states? The transformation of the wonderfully forested states of Ohio and Indiana into farmland during the 19th century.
26. What were the first cargoes of tree products exported from America? Sassafras bark collected along the coasts of Maine and Massachusetts was shipped to England in 1603 by a man named Martin Pring, Captain George Weymouth, in 1605, took to England a load of white pine logs which he cut in Maine along the Penobscot and Kennebec Rivers.
27. Is the loss of our original American forests a human tragedy? Not in the sense of what happened in China, eastern Mediterranean, and what is happening in large areas of Africa today. This country had statesmanlike leadership in the nick of time to preserve much of the sentimental, scenic, and wildlife value of our finest trees in the National Parks and to control the use of trees in our national forests. The largest users of trees, the timber, paper, and wood- products companies, are taking the leadership in sound forestry practices to insure a supply of trees for future generations. Both government and private conservation movements are gaining momentum by leaps and bounds, with the result that forest areas may be increasing today. Nevertheless, for spiritual assets, for wildlife and the enchantment of the wilderness, efforts should be relentless to leave every last one of the superb giants in the Northwest still standing. Nature took hundreds and even thousands of years to create them, and a little man with his terrible mechanical power can destroy one of these marvels of life in minutes. Now that we have learned how to grow trees like crops, we should be compelled to raise the wood and to stimulate new growth to supply all our necessities for tree products, and leave those last forests of old giants unharmed.
28. What does "species" of tree mean? It means the individual kind of tree. Trees of the same species have the same characteristics of bark, leaf, flower, seed, etc., and present the same general appearance. The word species is both singular and plural.
29. How many species of trees are there in the United States? 1,182 species grow naturally in our country, and many more have been introduced.
30. How does our number of species compare with other countries? Ours is a far greater tree treasury than Europe's. Only India has more species.
31. What does the "genus" of a tree mean? Genus refers to the class of a tree and includes any number of species. Trees of the same genus have the same basic flower structure and may resemble each other in outward appearance, but differ in such details as teeth of leaf, style of acorn, color of bark, angles of branches, length of thorns, presence or absence of hairs. The plural of genus is genera.
32. How are genus and species indicated in the name of a tree? In everyday language the species is named first when it is named at all; for example, white oak, black walnut, sugar maple. In scientific language the genus is named first and the species second, so these three trees would be, respectively, Quercus alba, Juglans nigra, Acer saccharum.
33. What tree genus has the greatest number of species? Hawthorn with 165 species. Some of these species are so complicated that an expert would have trouble identifying them. The average person can enjoy hawthorns by knowing four of the commonest: cockspur thorn, white thorn, Washington thorn, and English hawthorn.
34. What large forest tree genus has the greatest number of species? Oak, with some 60 species. Of these 9 are common in northeastern United States, 8 in the South, 3 in the Northwest, and 5 in California. These are all that one would have to know to enjoy oaks most likely to be encountered. Recognizing different kinds of trees is a simple puzzle and not a scientific project. (See Question 192.)
35. What area has the most species of trees? Eastern United States, particularly the southern Appalachian Mountains, which was a natural sanctuary from which trees radiated after the Ice Age. Florida and California with trees imported from all over the world also have many different kinds of trees.
36. What is meant by hardwood and softwood trees? The hardwoods are trees with broad leaves, usually dropping in winter. The softwoods are trees with needles, typically evergreen and bearing cones.
37. Is the wood of the hardwoods actually harder than the wood of the softwoods? Yes, generally, and from the viewpoint of the lumber man who thinks in terms of the hardwoods—oak, hickory, walnut, versus the softwoods—pine, fir, redwood. Actually, some hardwoods such as poplar, and willow (and the phenomenal balsa which is the softest, lightest wood in the world), are much softer than some softwoods such as red cedar and bald cypress. (See Question 999.)
38. What is meant by deciduous and coniferous? Deciduous means leaf-dropping, and is another word for hardwood. Coniferous means cone bearing, and is another word for softwood.
39. What is the tallest tree? A redwood sequoia in Big Tree National Park, on Redwood Highway, California, is 300 feet high. This tree has a circumference of 65 feet at 4 feet. Claims that this is the tallest tree in the world are disputed by a eucalyptus in Australia said to be 326 feet high. (See Question 169.)
40. How large do pine cones grow? Cones of the sugar pine are longer than 20 inches.
41. What tree has the largest leaves? The American hardwood with the largest single blade is large-leafed cucumber tree, Magnolia macrophylla. This magnolia with 30-inch leaves grows in limestone valleys of North Carolina in protected spots where it avoids tearing its huge sail-like leaves in the wind. Banana leaves reach 12 feet, and always have a tattered appearance. The date palm has leaves 15 feet long, not in single blades but consisting of leaflets along an axis. The largest true leaf is Hercules' club (Aralia spinosa) with blades two feet wide and three feet long—but these are double compound with leaflets so they can be mistaken for small leaves. This is a southern tree but it is often planted in the north.
42. What leaves turn what colors in the fall? Sugar maple, sumac: flame red and orange. Red maple, dogwood, sassafras, scarlet oak: dark, rich red. Poplar, birch, tulip tree, willow: yellow. Ash: plum purple. Oak, beech (often streaked with yellow along the veins), larch, elm, hickory, sycamore: tan or brown. The locust retains its green until the leaves drop. The black walnut, butternut drop leaves so fast they don't have time to turn. (See Question 221.)
43. Why do chips of birch sink when they leap from your axe into the brook? Birch has a high proportion of green wood, that is, cells filled with sap instead of air.
44. What tree produces the hardest wood? Desert ironwood of the Southwest has wood as heavy as stone that blunts tools and can hardly be cut with a saw. In our eastern woodland blue beech (Carpinus caroliniana) and hop hornbeam (Ostrya virginiana) are extremely hard and also go by the name of ironwood.
45. What is the difference between a plane tree and a sycamore? These names are interchangeable in the United States. In England the tree we call sycamore is called plane tree. The sycamore in England is a species of maple.
46. What is the difference between larch and tamarack? Tamarack is an alternative name for the eastern larch (Larix americana). The tall western larch and European larch are not, strictly speaking, tamarack. Tamarack should not be confused with tamarisk, a small tree with grayish, juniper-like leaves from Mediterranean countries.
47. What makes white birch so flexible? A slender trunk, with fine straight grain and elastic bark. Also, there is a high proportion of green wood in white birch, with cell walls soft and flexible.
48. How do branches "marry" and grow together? Friction wears off the outer bark, and when the living cells of the inner bark (cambian) are pressed together they merge into one structure. This usually occurs when the branches are young and the bark is tender. This is the same process as grafting.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from 1001 Questions Answered About Trees by Rutherford Platt. Copyright © 1987 Katherine Lampard, Rutherford H. Platt, Jr., Alexander D. Platt, Susan Platt and Barbara Platt. Excerpted by permission of Dover Publications, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
I HISTORY AND FACTS,II FORESTRY,
III HOME TREES,
IV TREE PRODUCTS,
V TREE PESTS AND DISEASES,
VI THE TREE AS A LIVING THING,
INDEX,