Ontario's Old-Growth Forests

I've just finished reading Paul O'Hara's book A Trail Called Home. It's the story of southern Ontario's ecosystems told through O'Hara's own experiences. O'Hara draws on decades of experience working as a field botanist, as well as a native plant grower and landscaper. The book is part autobiography, part ecology, part philosophical reflection, in the tradition of environmental writers like Charles Sauriol or Henry David Thoreau - it's a mix that can go either way, but O'Hara... pulls it off beautifully. There's a great section on the real value of native species, and another on marker trees (trees that were probably culturally modified to mark ancient native trails) - the photos of marker trees are fantastic. This is a book that will make you reflect on where we come from, and where we're going, and will leave you feeling somewhat optimistic. https://www.dundurn.com/books/Trail-Called-Home See more

Never judge the age of an old-growth forest tree by size alone. This stand in Great Smoky Mountains National Park- NC has some seriously old trees. One, dead no...w, was an eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) cut for a foot bridge. It had 535 rings at the stump. I also cored a hemlock and counted 411 rings under a microscope. Why?- it was less than 9 diameter. 400 year+ hemlocks were once common here, but hemlock woolly adelgid has wiped them out. The tree pictured is a modest tuliptree (Liriodendron tulipifera) 28 diameter. I cored this tree for research and found it to be a solid 390 years old in 1995 (core is mounted). It still stands as of last week, and clearly illustrates that old does not always equal big! So 414 years old this year (not nearly the oldest known, btw). Incidentally, I took a group of foresters to this tree and asked them to estimate the age. Completely oblivious to the crown architecture which clearly indicated advanced age, most estimated 60-90 years.

http://www.ancientforest.org/rushbrook-provincial-park/

https://www.thestar.com//408-year-old-tree-discovered-in-a From a survey we did this fall with Nate Torenvliet. This is a large tract of pristine old-growth forest in Algonquin Park's unprotected zone (and not the only one).