Road trip, Ct/RI

[sam goodwin]

On Sunday, 10/23/2011, we made a tree hunt, geocaching and Johnnycake festival trip through Ct to RI. There is a geocache at the site of the Ashford, Ct, once national champion, northern red oak, that had a 26 foot girth and impressive root-knees. It is still living but dropping branches and has large cavities in the trunk. I posted some pictures.

One of the posted logs for the cache had a picture and note about the Pelham, Ontario, Canada Comfort sugar maple. It has the distinction of being the oldest living sugar maple in all of Canada at 500 plus years old. It is now part tree, part lamppost with the amount of concrete that has been used in order to preserve it! More pictures and you can Google it.

After the festival it was off to Bristol, RI to check some of their trees. There are alot listed for downtown but due to the time remaining and lack of homework on my part, (how hard can it be to find a 115 foot tulip tree on route 114?) I only saw a couple of the trees. One was RI largest, in terms of girth, 16 feet, tulip tree. It is located in someones backyard so I did not try to measure it. From a distance I saw the london plane/sycamore twins. I failed to find one the the more interesting sounding ones, called the 3 in 1. A Norway maple, Austrian pine fused together into a helix with a Seberian elm growing out of the crotch. I will have to plan on a return, this time, a walking tour of Bristol! Most of the trees along route 114 downtown had 10" X 5' planks around them. I assume for protection from snowplowing but I did not think they get that much snow and some were a good distance up on banks and far from the road.

Sam Goodwin

Red Oak

Red Oak

Red Oak

Red Oak

Red Oak

Comfort Maple Sign

Comfort Maple - Whole Tree

Comfort Maple

[ElijahW]

Sam,

Thanks for the post and pictures. That oak really doesn't look like it has much time left. From what I've seen of CT and RI, there isn't much for big, old trees anymore. Along with the rest of the Northeast, the area was probably quite a marvel in colonial times and before, but now it's just a shadow of its former self. When I was in downtown New Haven, CT, I was startled by the elm-shaded park (or green). They seemed to all be American elms or hybrids, and I had never seen such a collection of large, healthy elms before. The park is several acres in size right downtown near Yale University, surrounded by nothing but elms.

Elijah