The Forestry Forum
General Forestry => Forest Education => Topic started by: Grrr413 on February 07, 2013, 11:46:33 PM
This might sound odd, but I have a question concenring color of tree rings. Just recently several of my trees were cut down. I decided to count the rings to determine their ages. While looking at them I noticed something peculiar about them. For last several years the rings have gotten thicker and much darker in color. I have been trying to figure out what this could mean and have been looking everywhere. All that i have found is that one ring is where early wood starts and late wood ends. The species are white pine and and blue spruce if that helps. The trees were around 42 years old and for the first 35 years or so the color of the wood is realtively light in color but for the next 7 years the wood is much darker. Even the early wood of the last 7 years is much darker then the late wood of the first 35. If someone knows what this means I am really intrested in learning what.
All I can think of is that this wood is fully mature wood with a higher resin content than the previous wood, and the higher resin content is making the rings darker. A picture would be nice.
Grrr413,welcome to the forum. Where abouts are ya? Having your place logged? WDH knows wood. ;D
Were the trees damaged in any way? I'm thinking maybe an insect attack a few years ago caused the tree to put out more resin to protect itself and now it's showing?
When you say they've gotten thicker that makes me think the trees were released - what happened 7 years ago, was the stand thinned? That wouldn't affect the color though as far as I know...
none of the trees were thined, but there was a mjaor road built just on the other side and they put up a large hill and I did notice that there was more water pooling then before. Could this have caused the color change?
Was the trees opened up to more light,sunlight?
Thanks everyone I actually think it could have been because of more sunlight because a earby tree had been under attack by insects and had lost its needles I believe this could be the culprit and the fact it released more resin.