[MassChestnutOrchards] Data for Ashfield-Hawley orchard(s)

[Mike or Penny Novack]

Penny and I took down the data during August and I finally have it all 
entered into the spreadsheet. A few general notes.

a) Dead doesn't mean dead as gone forever. At this stage of life the 
trees aren't being permanently killed by the blight. But obviously will 
take time for sprouts to reach significant size. Different from not 
being able to see any sign of life and so noted.

b) DBH not taken if for main trunk < 0.8 inches (in that case just 
height estimate). In cases where there was a secondary of some size that 
looks as if could be useful in testing that diameter also noted.

c) This orchard was severely damaged in last winter's ice storm with 
some trees recovering quicker than others. Also because of the massive 
amounts of wound damage we can expect more blight and the resulting stem 
deaths.

d) As can be seen by the data, the Chinese trees are not doing well, not 
really getting beyond bushes. The site is probably beyond the limits for 
Chinese to become trees. Would be interesting to see if the same thing 
is happening at other sites of comparable altitude/exposure. In Virginia 
or North Carolina or Tennessee would be around 3000' for wind exposed 
sites or 3500' for sheltered (the difference in "tree line" elevation is 
about 1000' between here in New England and down there). Do we have any 
such orchards to compare data?

e) There is significant blight in the orchard at this point with trunks 
dying back and resprouting. Special note has been taken of one tree 
which bears watching as it appears to have successfully walled off the 
blight instead of being girdled. This isn't new blight as the branches 
above the site on that side of the trunk which died did so last year (no 
sign of having leafed out this spring). However well above that point 
the entire crown looks healthy with the tree having made excellent growth.

Michael

-- 
There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality of the grave.

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: chestnut orchards 08312009.xls
Type: application/vnd.ms-excel
Size: 361984 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mrsgale.fates.org/pipermail/masschestnutorchards/attachments/20090917/c0fc52a7/attachment-0001.xls