Native Tree Society BBS

[album][/album]Secrest Arboretum is a pretty arboretum outside of Wooster Ohio in the north central region of the state. Terrain is gently rolling.
Nice collection of exotic conifers and nice landscaping in general. Pictures are from fall 2006.


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Landscape:

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White pines:

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Dawn Redwoods:

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Maples:

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Japense Maple and some Birches

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What a beautiful arboretum and beautiful pix. Thanks for posting them.

Jenny

Randy-

I used to stop at Secrest frequently when I had a project in Millersburg. I particularly remember a big incense cedar,golden-larch and bigleaf magnolia. Also the plantation plots were interesting---there was about a quarter acre stand of American beech planted adjacent to a stand of European beech, with similar comparison plots of other related species.

Steve

Secrest Arboretum was hit by a significant tornado last year. Steve Galehouse reported this, but wasn't able to get any pictures. I stopped last weekend and found the area is opened. It appears the northern part was hit very hard in a swath ~200-250 yards wide. This area was predominantly native woodland with some short exotics planted in the understory. The short exotics survived but the native forest was smashed:
On of the saddest casualties was a massive red oak ~ 6.5' diameter at ground level. I counted 183 rings. If I remember right this tree was short and squat:
The Blowdown stopped just short of the dawn redwoods plot, planted, according to the sign, in 1953. The tallest was 7' 3.5" x 111.6' tall. Not the isolated specimen in the front center just behind the yews, which is broken off 1/3 of the way up (This is the tree pictured in the foreground in the second dawn redwood in my original post above). The area where I'm standing used to be forested. The staff apparently took the opportunity to regrade the whole area because of a rapidly eroding ravine behind me and to the left.

A complete Survey of the Dawn Redwood Grove turned up a slightly taller tree in the interior of the grove: 5' 10.0" x 113.5', with 5 trees 110' and higher, 10 trees between 100' and 110' tall, and 5 trees between 90' and 100' tall.

Data is compiled in the position the trees are planted. North is up.
Looking south at the grove. The first visible row corresponds to the first row in the table above. Tallest tree in this View is 7' 5.0" x 111.0' tall. The fattest is in the first row, clear to the right, 7' 9.5" x 104.0'

Rand,
Thanks for getting back there and measuring the grove. I'm very impressed that so many have topped 110' that far north. I haven't seen that sized grove anywhere before. It's very fortunate that the tornado missed them.
Brian

There is actually a larger planting at Dawes Arboretum south of Newark, OH that contains 300+ trees. It was planted ~1990, so they aren't all that big yet (~20' tall x ~8" dbh). The interpretive sign says it was an attempt to sample the full diversity of the species across its entire range. You can see the growth isn't all that uniform across the planting:
Still, mostly the ones I see are ornamental plantings in peoples' yards. The biggest I've noticed in columbus is maybe 2/3 the size of the Secrest trees.

Impressive quantity of metasequoias! There's a guy in North Carolina who's planting them in different habitats in the hopes of reintroducing them to the wild in the US. He's also planting other exotics but the plantation won't be open to the public until 2030.