A TREE STORY
Eco-gardening is at its best in The Monday Garden
March 9, 2003, issue no. 50
Thursday’s snow’s melting; the sparrows say good days are coming. So, here’s a late winter treat: the tree chronicles, “plain as day”, when the trees are bare and it’s warm enough to be outside long enough to read them. It’s not surprising that the lives of trees, the largest and longest-living organisms on earth, resemble multigenerational soap operas, played in extreme slow motion. Tramping in the snow with a friend, along the Mill River at Scalzi Park, I came upon this remarkable tale.
On the left, is a smooth-barked American beech. American Beeches can grow to mammoth size: 90’ high and 60’ wide. It takes almost a human century for a beech to reach adult size. Then they live for hundreds of years. This beech is not yet half-grown.
same view the following October