MO Trees

[ozarkgem]

 Are a lot of your Red Oaks dieing? They are dieing like crazy here. I was logging the other day and one about 40 dia and clear for 10' dead and rotting away. I was across the creek and I couldn't get to it. What a waste. Plus I didn't have anything to  lift it with. The owner said I could cut anything I wanted. I cut one dead RO and it was good inside. I have quite a few more to cut plus about 500 more Cedar. I love retirement. Where in Mo is your farm?

[mesquite buckeye]

Yates (N central MO). Lots of oaks died in the drought the last couple of years. It isn't the first time and I'm sure it won't be the last. Nature's scythe. The strongest best ones will survive.

[mesquite buckeye]

One more little insight. I kind of grumbled when the forester pushed off some soft mast trees on me (mulberries, wild plums). In another thread I lamented the loss of vigor in the forest generally after tordoning the vines, failing to note another thing that could be affecting vigor.

We have a canary island date palm at one of my rental houses. Stick with me here, not really a random thought. The local birds use it as a roost and do produce a lot of do do. My daughter used to live there and never had to pay for fertilizer, as there was always plenty under the tree.

Now back to the apparently unrelated forest vigor loss. With the loss of the grapes, there would be less birds visiting the area and making deposits that are high in nitrogen and phosphorus, as well as flying in micronutrients from adjacent areas with better availability of those nutrients. I know, it doesn't seem like a lot, but think of all the birds that are around and it starts to add up. Those soft mast trees and shrubs could really help the soil fertility over time.

What I am saying is tordon definitely seems to have an effect on vigor. When you add in the loss of manure from the fruit eating birds, the effect is greater. I also think there are other benefits to the forest from having those birds there, including insect control, which becomes more important as we get things like EAB and thousand cankers coming in. Both are insect or insect/disease complexes. Knock down those bugs and less disease. ;D

Just sayin' ;D

[ozarkgem]

forgot to ask. what is a hedged walnut? Been here all my life and never heard the term.

[Cedarman]

Mesquite, you mentioned birds fertilizing the woods.  There has been some good debate as to the consequences of the demise of the passenger pigeon.  The old pioneers said they would blacken the sky when passing over and break limbs when they roosted, they were so plentiful. Imagine the rain of manure when those birds passed through. Wonder how the ecology of the midwest is now compared to 200 years ago?

[SwampDonkey]

I think the term for the bottom of a gully is a fan. Seen some of the biggest spruce trees and amabilis fir growing on gully fans. ;D I think a delta is out in a river. Just saying (old forum saying ;D ).

I think your doing a good thing looking after that land. A lot would just walk away.

[mesquite buckeye]

forgot to ask. what is a hedged walnut? Been here all my life and never heard the term.

Hedging is an ecological/land management term for woody plants that have been repeatedly browsed (chewed on) until they start to look like a hedge. From the plant's point of view, it is armoring itself against further overbrowsing, as the exterior of the plant is full of the ends of sticks which makes it difficult for the animal to eat more leaves. Hedging is generally considered an indicator of overbrowsing.

Consider the related term: highlining. This is where browsers, like deer eat everything they can reach, forming a level bottom on the canopy. You can get this with rabbits, too, but the high line is lower. It is actually pretty entertaining to watch them work. They will stand up on their tippy toes to reach those last leaves, and even jump up a little to grab the last bite. ;D

[mesquite buckeye]

Mesquite, you mentioned birds fertilizing the woods.  There has been some good debate as to the consequences of the demise of the passenger pigeon.  The old pioneers said they would blacken the sky when passing over and break limbs when they roosted, they were so plentiful. Imagine the rain of manure when those birds passed through. Wonder how the ecology of the midwest is now compared to 200 years ago?

I'd think really different. Hardly any fire where the Indians burned most every year. Different wildlife and densities. No bulldozers other than buffalos. ;D

Better yet, let's look at 10,000 years ago when we had elephants, giant ground sloths etc. It would have looked a lot like Africa with extended savannas of tall grass prairie dotted with honey locust and osage orange. We wouldn't even think it was the same place.

[mesquite buckeye]

I think the term for the bottom of a gully is a fan. Seen some of the biggest spruce trees and amabilis fir growing on gully fans. ;D I think a delta is out in a river. Just saying (old forum saying ;D ).

I think your doing a good thing looking after that land. A lot would just walk away.

You are right. It is only a delta when the water is running. I'll try to get a picture during a flood. ;D

It is actually good land. The soil is over 30 feet deep. It has just been abused. I'm just trying to make it right. There are probably only 5 acres out of the 80 that still need a lot of healing. Trees grow pretty fast once things get better, like 4 rings to the inch fast. ;D

[SwampDonkey]

Gullies usually have run off water, it's just not permanent. On mountain sides on the west coast you would see this often and some dispersing or shifting in the fan area from time to time. Yes fans are usually rich sites.

Sometimes there's 3 steps back before one step ahead when your dealing with wildlife, weather events, and man caused stuff. ;D

[mesquite buckeye]

Alluvial fan is more correct. I was just messing with you. ;D The mechanism is basicly the same. Sediment laden water slows down and drops its sediment. We have alluvial fans everywhere in the desert. It's easy when there is almost no permanent water. We also have what would normally be deltas in watersheds, but the water goes poof. :(

Come down sometime after a big flood. The flows are more like runny concrete or cooling wax than water. You can watch fans form in just a few minutes. After a really big rain, washes might cut 10 feet deep or deposit dirt, sand, rocks and other debris over a large area 2-4 ft deep. Most of our alluvial fans are layer upon layer of flood/landslide deposited material. During slower events, nothing permanent gets deposited.

[SwampDonkey]

Actually colluvial is what I had in mind because it's more to do with slope failure from water saturation and overland water flow or creep and slippage that isn't a river. But on the NW coast they get close to 2.5 meters or rain and often them gullies get water in them. Is your place there getting river deposit or is it just slope failure and sheet wash from higher up during storms and such?

That big slide in Washington this spring was colluvial.

Alluvial  is river deposit.

Then around here we have ancient glacial-fluvial deposits (due to melt water from glaciers)  as well as alluvial from flooding or high water on the rivers. Best kind of soil.  And before that this place was all ocean around here. Found fossilized ocean life dead centre of the province on the River Don. The tide comes up the river 60 miles.

[mesquite buckeye]

Well, at least in the stuff I have seen, one blends into another. Definitions are fine as far as they go, but often the real situation is more complicated than that. Few of us have seen the kinds of floods that leave their mark in the geological record, which is mostly composed of catastrophes.

Here is one example. Over 10 years ago there were two great fires in the Santa Catalina Mountains. These both burned around 100,000 acres each. A couple of years after that a slow moving, rotating thunderstorm dumped between 8-11 inches of rain in less than 2 hours. This is basicly double or more the amount that we consider for the 100 year flood calculations and an entire year's precipitation for us. The mountainsides let go all over the place. This is where the nice idea of colluvial, alluvial and other definitions stops working. Normally a colluvial deposit is relatively local and mostly stays near the place where it broke (slumped) loose . When you add enough water, it can be anything between what you would consider a normal landslide to something like stiff to runny concrete, which is what we saw recently in Washington, then thick muddy water and finally just sand, rocks and relatively clean water. Where do you draw the line? Also consider that all the canyons were already roaring with water before the landslides hit.

After it was all done there were clearly demarcated landslide deposits, some with boulders the size of houses. However, lots of that material ended far downstream, indistinguishable from whatever you would find along these washes. There were flood deposits along the canyon washes as they spread into the alluvial fans, although all the washes here are entrenched.

I know this story well as it tried to kill me on the way to work later that morning.

Just sayin. I think sometimes we get overly dependent upon our words that we attempt to use to describe things, which, at best, is an imperfect system.

We can get the flowing concrete analogy without any landslides, per se. All it takes is a really big flow. The washes can cut 10 feet deep in one place, then go downstream a way and make a really fat, wide deposit many feet deep. When you see the phenomenon in action, it is hard to wrap the mind around.

Even in a relatively normal flood, you can hear the rocks clacking and rolling in the washes. The flow gets faster and they act almost like bits of sand doing the saltation thing into the air in the dust bowl. This creates a powerful grinding and abrading machine. Cars that get washed off a road in a flood are frequently buried to above the windows when they get found, full of rocks, mud, sand and debris.

[mesquite buckeye]

Gullies with permanent water I know well. We have a really big one up north of us. ;D

[SwampDonkey]

It's easy for me, one deposit is river, stream, brook, one ain't. ;D Both have unconsolidated material. Just means it's unstratified, nothing else. Those landslides like in Washington are common all over the NW. What it looks like depends on the mix of material and water. And it will surprise ya how quick a pile of dirt and rock gets hard. You can dump a load of top soil and leave it alone for a couple weeks in a few rains with the baking sun between the rain and that is solid as the floor. Not concrete, but your shoes won't fill with dirt when you walk on it. If it didn't stiffen up forest roads would be nothing but soup all the time. ;D

One can misinterpret geology, just as one can misidentify a fern. I worked with a fellow once that was good with indicator plants when identifying sites. One fern his book didn't tell'm about was the ostrich fern, a completely edible fern. He didn't know what it was, but grew on sites not far from many sites he interpreted for silviculture prescriptions. There was no way he was eating it, because he figured since he didn't know about it no one else did either. Didn't matter a fellow picked and ate them all his life as well as the local natives. :D

[mesquite buckeye]

My brother in law went out to the farm last week and sent some pictures of the little trees we planted. He said where he looked there was about 90% survival. Sure hope so and praying the rains keep coming so they can get well established.



 
I'm thinking elderberry.




 
Happy red cedar.




 
Not so happy red cedar.




 
Maybe a pecan. :-\




 
Swamp white oak, I think.




 
Redbud.




 
Walnut.


BIL says tickus are thickus. Yuck. Better in October. ;D 8) 8) 8)

[WDH]

Notice in your "pecan" pic, that the branching pattern is opposite.  I believe that one to be elderberry. 

Good luck to the little trees. 

[mesquite buckeye]

You are right. ;D 8) 8) 8)

Looking back, 2 different elderberries. Tough when you don't take the pictures yourself. :-\

[mesquite buckeye]

No MO trees this year. My truck is dead. :(

[SwampDonkey]

They must sell trucks in Tucson.  8)

[mesquite buckeye]

Only to people who can afford them. :(

[UN Hooker]

I thought you drove a Cummins, What happened ?

          UN

[mesquite buckeye]

Lost a rod bearing near the New Mexico border by San Simon. Two weeks and $4000 to change out engines for one with only 180,000 on it. Mine had 340,000 and a lot of hard working, rough, dusty miles. I have reattached the bed to the bed frame 3 times now and the bed has been patched with construction anchor and nail plates with snowmobile pop rivets twice. The tail lights and camper shell are held together with aluminum duct tape. All holding together but the poor old truck looks sad. I'm hoping this fix will limp along for at least another 100,000. :( :'( :-[

[mesquite buckeye]

Update on the truck and news you can use. Turns out the engine swallowed a valve, which had fun playing ping pong in the cylinder with the piston. :(

I will be putting in that used engine after all. Cheaper than an overhaul.

Talked with a guy out by the ranch who used to diagnose diesels for the copper mines out here, keeping million dollar machines running or figuring out what they need to get them fixed ASAP. He said just because the engine rattles and bangs, doesn't necessarily mean that you have lost a rod bearing. First, check the oil pressure. If a rod bearing, there should be a pressure drop. Next crack each injector loose to see if an injector has failed. That can mimic a rod bearing and is a lot cheaper and easier to fix.

The mechanics at the diesel place were about 4-1 for a rod bearing. Only one of them was not sure. It wasn't that. Too bad it wasn't just an injector for me. Maybe one of you guys will be luckier. ;D

[mesquite buckeye]

Back in Tucson after a whirlwind tour to Missouri, Ohio and Michigan. Thought you might enjoy some photos from the time at the Missouri farm.
Last year's tree planting is looking pretty good. Looks like the survival of the little trees is at least 90%. Here are a couple pictures:

 
I think this one is a walnut.

 
One of the white oaks...


While we were checking the trees, we just happened to run into some of these.

 
While we were picking we also sampled the local wildlife. 

 
Darlene picked about 50 ticks off me while we walked about. I was saturated with repellent from head to toe, which seemed to stop most of the chiggers, but one tick hooked onto me. >:( He met an unfortunate demise. ;D

More wildlife:

 

Butterfly weed.

 


We found another clone of blackberries about 6-8 feet tall and about 50 feet across. The berries were quite large and especially tasty.

 
For scale, my nephew is 6' 8" and his hand is not small. Very big. A couple of the family members will be returning for rooted cuttings. Downside is the vines/bushes are very heavily thorned and they will tangle trap you if you get too far in. We got about a half gallon of berries from that one bush where we could get to them. I think they would be fine on a trellis. The blackberry cobbler was yummy. digin1 digin_2

Meanwhile, back in the woods the pruned and thinned redcedars are starting to get crowded and need thinning again. lots of these are from 6-8" thick now. Some are over a foot (not shown).

  

 

Nice trees along the big draw.

 
These are in the 20" plus range and still growing nicely.

A couple of my nephews and I reopened some of the old logging trails that had been blocked by fallen trees and brush.

 
Adam ran the mower through after. We thought it would be fun to go through the woods in the dark and maybe find some glowing mushrooms. Too bad we left the lights on the whole time as we struggled to get through the rather muddy trail. If we had checked with the lights off, we would have seen plenty, as the forest floor was covered with jack o lantern mushrooms. Turns out they glow green in the dark. I identified them after we left Missouri. :(

More in October. ;D