Tall trees in Chile and Argentina?

[AndrewJoslin]

Fitzroya's stature resembles giant sequoia, but the latter grows in summer-dry environment subjected to frequent fires (at least in the past). I haven't been to Chile, but I think Fitzroya grows in a wet climate, and also at poorly drained sites. Perhaps western red-cedar (Thuja plicata) would be a better North American equivalent.

Kouta

Agreed, I'd done a photo search on Fitzroyal and a Giant Sequoia in a snowy context was included in the results, I mistakenly thought it was a Fitroyal.
-AJ

[Don]

Fitzroya is also of interest for having the second oldest confirmed ages of any tree species in the world, 3622 years.  If I remember the article by Lara and Villalba correctly, that age was from the stump of a tree cut in the 1970's.
Jess

Don't you hate destructive sampling?! Too bad they couldn't have learned from the falling of Prometheus, which was at least 4862 years old and possibly more than 5000 when cut.
-Don

[Neil]

hi Don,

I'm nearly 100% sure this Fitzroya was cut for other reasons and not tree-ring investigations. The data was worked up in the 1980s at the earliest and published in 1993. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/260/5111/1104


neil

[Jess Riddle]

Don,

I didn't mean to imply the researchers cut the trees.  The article states "We collected radial wedges from alerce stumps from a mixed conifer-broad-leaved stand that was logged from 1975 to 1976 and cores from living trees taken with increment borers in other nearby unlogged stands".

Jess

[Bart Bouricius]

I agree with Kouta,

They should also have had someone who could climb to get some pictures of the trees from different vantage points and get at least one height measurement.  In this presentation there are 37 images and only 5 of the trees themselves, unless you count distant aerial photographs which do not really show distinct trees.  Definitely a worthy project, but with the goal they had, there definitely should have been more image emphasis on the trees than on the road problems.  The point is not the journey.

Bart

[PAwildernessadvocate]

Maybe a good place to look would be the west coast of southern Chile:



If Chile's temperate rainforests are anything like North America's temperate rainforests, their native trees might reach some impressive sizes. The temperate rainforests on the west coast of the south island of New Zealand are pretty impressive too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valdivian_temperate_rain_forest

[KoutaR]

Those world maps of temperate rainforest are usually strongly biased towards English speaking countries, and for obvious reason: they show temperate areas where the vegeation is locally called "rainforest". For example, in large parts of Japan the climate is wetter than, say, in Tasmania. But Japanese forests are not called "rainforest", because it is an English word and English is not spoken in Japan. Chile is an exception.

The temperate rainforest of western North America are unique in that they are conifer dominated from sea level upwards.

Kouta

[PAwildernessadvocate]

If anyone is interested, the source for the above image is a book called "The Rainforests of Home." Here is a portion how the the range of temperate rainforests is characterized:

http://www.inforain.org/rainforestatlas
The largest contiguous coastal temperate rain forest traces the northwestern maritime margin of North America, from Kodiak Island in Alaska south through British Columbia and the U.S. Pacific Northwest to California's "fogbelt" redwoods. Elsewhere in the north, Norway contains small fragments of coastal rain forest, and scientists speculate that Japan may have some areas of rain forest as well. The forests formerly found along the west coasts of Ireland and Scotland, parts of Iceland, and in a narrow crescent along the eastern shore of the Black Sea are long gone. Chile contains the Southern Hemisphere's largest remaining coastal temperate rain forest. Significant areas of coastal rain forest also stand on the west coast of New Zealand's South Island and on the Australian island of Tasmania, where broadleaved rain forests harbor the most ancient constituents of the Australian flora.

[Don]

Jess/Neil-
Sorry, I was making an apparently too oblique reference to the Great Basin bristlecone pine known as Prometheus, cut down in the 1960's before the fellers knew how old it turned out to be (in excess of 5000 years?).
-Don

Don,

I didn't mean to imply the researchers cut the trees.  The article states "We collected radial wedges from alerce stumps from a mixed conifer-broad-leaved stand that was logged from 1975 to 1976 and cores from living trees taken with increment borers in other nearby unlogged stands".

Jess