1000 year old tree?

Ah ha ha! He meant a 30' tape measure. They curl up real nice and compact and hook on to your tool belt just fine without dragging... but you do have to roll them back up after you use them.

I was 5' 4" once too. My doctor told me it was time to change the height on my DL because I had shrunk. Told him to bite his lousy tongue and that next time I was scheduling for an early morning appointment to reduce my shrinkage factor by a half an inch or so. levilyla, is your daughter hinting that you might have shrunk too? The audacity of children these days!

LOL well she is shorter then I am and I am 5' 4"

ducking from Mom who is about to bonk me on the head!!!!!!

LOL about the measuring tape

Oh LOL yourselves...I am 5' 4 and holding...and btw Anne...it is "a tad shorter THAN that not then that" p.s. and of course I knew it was a measuring tape!

This message was edited Mar 25, 2006 11:34 AM

So.....how many tads are ya?(Hi bu!)

oh the grammar remarks poof out of here now lol

Hi Dave LOL

I suppose I could hold my height at 5' 4" if they put me on a rack and stretched me back out. To the rack levilyla! Eeek out that inch or so you need to legitimatize your height rankings within the family.

Or you could just tease that curly hair and make it BiG, BIG, BIG! Then you could easily be 6'4"... HE HE

Then we could all say that Equil was having a big hair day!

http://www.river-city-housing.org/photos/Big_hair_CROPtop.jpg

Oh, I can see it now! A big hair day!

LMAO!!!!! well it does make him look taller!!!

Looks like Acer rubrum 'Bowhall'

Everytime y'all say LOL I think you are talking to me!!
I'm 5'8".

My DH just told me that we need to be on level ground to do all this geometry stuff....All of our trees are on a rather steep hillside. Guess I will have to wait until one falls and then pace it out. thanks for all the math lessons however. You all are brilliant.

I've got your answer, Leptodactylous.

Helium balloon and a long string. Let it float up and then reel it back in.

I'd recommend implementation on a breezeless day.

Edited for oops spelling.

This message was edited Mar 28, 2006 1:22 AM

Smarty Pants! That's the most wonderful idea...see I told you...you are a smarty pants plus now. That is really ingenious. O goody~~~ can't wait to tell vsp.

With no effort at encouragement, you've got me on a roll now.

You must provide photographic evidence of your endeavors. Pix of thee, tree, and vsp (maybe progeny? That would be The Hot Chick) performing each measurement style. Wear masks if you'd not like to be identified.

•Balloon and string
•EKG machine and physician
•Hopping backwards, arms extended and accounting for parallax
•Stick wedged in webbing (are you a duck or a Terrapin?) between thumb and forefinger
•Still pet, cloudy day, and yardstick

Finally, a team photo to give credit to the patience of the participants.

Should make quite an album.

LOL will do

Resin,

I've been thinking about this and have a few more questions. One, say the Gaylussacia brachycera patch in Pennsylvania is as is sometimes claimed to be 12,000 years old. But no single part of that patch, roots, stems is that old. It is, so-to-speak, a continually renewing genetic clone, so the only thing 12,000 years old is the genetic code. Which makes sense.

At first impression, this seems to lessen the marvel of a plant living that long, especially when compared to something like Methuselah--one stem, one root-system, 4,865 years in one place. But here is where I have the question. With Methuselah, or with any woody plant for that matter, the only living cells are a very thin film between dead wood and dead bark, annually renewing (dividing) and then dying. So, again, the only (living) thing that is 4,865 years old on Methuselah is the genetic code. Some of the interior cells may in fact be from that first year the tree grew, but they are dead. Am I getting that right?

Also, Resin, I'm trying to put an analogy to this that clarifies it. Would you agree that animals age because their cells divide like copies of analog recordings. In other words, I make a Grateful Dead tape and give it to you, you copy it and give it to Guy, who copies it and gives it to VV, and with each copy of a copy there is a loss of quality of the original recording? Thereby, to complete the analogy, animals age with each cell division. Whereas, with plants, cell division is like digital recording. Each copy is a perfect representation of the original message. No loss of quality. Is that about right?

Scott

Now I'm going to have to sit down and digest Didactic's ravings, except to say that it looks like I got the short end of that stick, living or Grateful(ly) Dead. If it had been a Tiny Tim acid rock 8 track, then I'd have something.

But I'd say, no, that is not a good analogy.

Grateful Dead? You all ARE young....I remember saying to my children "I will be grateful when they are dead"~~

...and most of them are!

Scott

Aren't they the ones with that horrible red tongue...Well I am glad most of them are gone.

I think that would be KISS. Sadly, they're still around. That tongue has got some milage on it...

Oh I am so glad someone doesn't know who they are. I will let the younger ones explain.

Resin,
But what about the accuracy of the analogy, comparing how humans/animals age versus how trees do? Obviously, with us and with my little dog Basil, each division of cells comes with a loss of signal. It is imperfect and we suffer as a consequence (and, oh, how we suffer!)

But with plants, the process happens perfectly, which is why I can grow a Damask rose cultivar that is exact to the first named plant which arose in the 14th Century.

Scott

Well you guys started my day off very interestingly. Don't think I will try to figure out how tall any of my trees are, they are all under age anyway.

Guy, I have been out of town for a while and this was the first chance I had to look at your wonderful tree album. I planted a Quercus macrocarpa, small Burr oak , in 2002. So guess I will not live to see anything like the ones in your photos. Thanks for putting them where we could all enjoy their beauty.

DonnaS

Silly Donna -- of course you will!
I plan to live to at least 300. Don't you?
;-)

Guy S.

I'm not too sure about 300, actually think I am pretty lucky to reach this ripe old age.

The Burr Oak really does grow quite fast, In four years it has reached close to 10 feet.The smallest Oak I have is Quercus concordia, Golden Oak . Course it is not really the little trees fault, it is maybe 18", I planted it in 2003, but the darn little cottontails trimmed it back severely last winter, 2005. this year it has a chicken wire cage around it.

Donna