Douglas fir

[CarlM]

I went to Oregon State! It was a lousy school, but Corvallis was beautiful place to live and a wonderful affordable town back when there were only 8000 students and HP had 5000 good paying jobs. Things are so different now, it might be a good time to rename it....

to Oregon-State??

I see Douglas-Fir trees suffering (along with all the other conifers) from drought, excessively high average temperatures year ‘round and other maladies associated with climate change. It’s heart breaking. The forests in the Pacific Northwest appear to be suffering and is it another canary in the cage warning for us?

After having gone through a Category 3 hurricane in the middle of Iowa 3 weeks ago there seem to be a lot of canaries giving out warnings.

[Larry Simonson]

This seems like a good time for having the attention of tree people. I was in Portland (Oregon) 7 or 8 years ago, walking thru a city park on top of a hill and I spotted some Maple(?) trees having seed pods with three winged seeds in trigonal symmetry. Every other maple I'd ever seen had two. I've not been able to find anyone who showed interest so I'm hoping this is the place to get an ID on those trees. Thanks

[MikeEdgerton]

This seems like a good time for having the attention of tree people. I was in Portland (Oregon) 7 or 8 years ago, walking thru a city park on top of a hill and I spotted some Maple(?) trees having seed pods with three winged seeds in trigonal symmetry. Every other maple I'd ever seen had two. I've not been able to find anyone who showed interest so I'm hoping this is the place to get an ID on those trees. Thanks

Acer pseudoplatanus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samara...moreSamara.png

It's unusual.

[pops1]

A little off topic, but regarding the canary. I live near the Mississippi and was out this week in the flat boat. From the water being high the last several years, almost constantly over the islands, the trees are dying. I saw a line of trees along an island and all were dead. The look of the river will be changing as the climate does with more storms the water is almost always over the islands and trees that can handle that will thrive and those since Mark Twain was piloting on the river will all be gone. Truly trying times we live in on several levels.

Back to the subject at hand.

[Jeff Hildreth]

And the mysterious death Of David Douglas of Doug Hyphen Fir fame..

FYI:

https://keolamagazine.com/then-now/t...david-douglas/

and this :

http://www.coffeetimes.com/daviddouglas.htm

I also recall having seen Douglas Hyphen Firs at an arboretum on the way up to Mt Haleakala on Maui back around 1981-2.

[Sue Rieter]

Not only that, but it's a line artificially drawn at a point in time. Go back in time far enough and species merge, go forward in time and they split. And sometimes even split and merge again...

If they were to conduct the equivalent of the Human Genome Project for trees, now then we might have something concrete on which to base species divisions and nomenclature.

[Ben Vierra]

What an interesting thread! Thanks to Brian D for starting it, although it's ranged far afield from his original question. I am a semi-regular lurker on this forum but rarely a poster, yet now I feel like responding to half a dozen comments.

BTW, most forestry folks around here use name pseudotsuga taxifolia, I knew also the pseudotsuga menziesii name but have been told it is old name... BTW, our name for the tree is "duglaska tisolistá" which is translation/modification of the Douglas and taxifolia (yew-leaved)

Yet another name for this tree, neat! I have never been to Slovakia, but I do remember seeing, umm, duglaska tisolistá when visiting southern Germany, near Baden Baden as I recall.

I do remember a comment my Dendrology professor at NCSU made when teaching oaks (Quercus). He told us that with some of the species within the red oak group, it wasn't unusual to hybridize occasionally, that they were kind of "promiscuous".

I have to ask, was this class with Dr. Braham? I studied at NCSU in the mid-2000s. The dendrology class I took there was a wild ride. North Carolina and neighboring states have such a diversity of trees!

There are oak trees on my property with the bark of white oak and the leaves of chestnut oak. Back in Virginia I could easily recognize white oak and chestnut oak winter or summer. I'm still not sure what the oak trees here are. (At least the red oaks look familiar.)

Could it be Quercus michauxii, or swamp chestnut oak? "[T]he bark of white oak and the leaves of chestnut oak" are just how I would describe swamp chestnut oak.

Hyphenating and common names: I like to write "Douglas-fir" with a hyphen, but I think pickiness with common names can be taken way too far. The most extreme example I've encountered is a plant manual for the New England states called Flora Novae Angliae, by Arthur Haines. Dr. Haines evidently couldn't stand the idea of common names NOT accurately reflecting relationships between plants, so throughout this otherwise very useful reference he freely invents many of his own non-scientific names for the plants and presents them as the common names. In most technical references if you know a common name for a plant, you stand a good chance of opening the index and finding what you need. Much less so with the Flora Novae Angliae. (Related link: https://gobotany.nativeplanttrust.org/ is a very useful plant ID site for the northeastern states, based heavily on Dr. Haines's work.)

Corvallis, Oregon: So many people who have posted seem to have a connection with Corvallis . . . and I do too. I grew up not far from there and Corvallis was the "big city" to me for many years.

This seems like a good time for having the attention of tree people. I was in Portland (Oregon) 7 or 8 years ago, walking thru a city park on top of a hill and I spotted some Maple(?) trees having seed pods with three winged seeds in trigonal symmetry. Every other maple I'd ever seen had two. I've not been able to find anyone who showed interest so I'm hoping this is the place to get an ID on those trees. Thanks

Were all of the "seed pods" or samaras in this configuration, or was it just a few on an otherwise standard tree? If the whole tree was like that, it would be very interesting to see.

Here are the Wind River Arboretum pictures:





I had trouble with an image of the placard next to the Douglas-fir round, which states: "A section of the largest known Douglas fir which grew near Mineral, Washington until windthrown in 1929. It's [sic] diameter at breast height was 15.4 feet. Height to a broken top 225 feet, and age approximately 875 years. This section is 9.8 feet in diameter outside the bark. It was cut 60 feet above the ground."

[tree]

I have to ask, was this class with Dr. Braham? I studied at NCSU in the mid-2000s. The dendrology class I took there was a wild ride. North Carolina and neighboring states have such a diversity of trees!

It was indeed Dr. Rich Braham's dendrology class, ca. 1984. He was one of my favorite professors, although my misty memory tells me it was Dr. Art Cooper who made the comment about promiscuous oaks, as he was for whatever reason guest teaching the lab that day at the Schenck Forest.

How cool that someone else on this forum took dendrology under Dr. Braham at NCSU, and that Dr. Braham was still teaching there some 20 years after I took his class! And yes, his tests were challenging - he loved to find juvenile examples of say, persimmon and black gum, which can look remarkably similar - especially to folks just learning how to identify tree species. But his enthusiasm and curiosity have infected me ever since, and that has enriched my life.

[sunburst]

...Could it be Quercus michauxii, or swamp chestnut oak? "[T]he bark of white oak and the leaves of chestnut oak" are just how I would describe swamp chestnut oak...

This prompted me to look it up and sure enough, that's what it is. Sort of on the fringe of the range apparently.
Interestingly, one of it's common names is "basket oak" (basket-oak?). I tried splitting some of it and it was a nightmare!

[Larry Simonson]

Ben Vierra asked "Were all of the "seed pods" or samaras in this configuration, or was it just a few on an otherwise standard tree? If the whole tree was like that, it would be very interesting to see."

I'm not sure I can trust my memory but as I recall there were multiple trees having the trigonal symmetric seed pods, exclusively. Maybe 8 years ago I E-mailed a Portland park official asking about this but never heard back. Because I was so surprised I grabbed a couple seed pods and somehow still have one, well dried out. This has been a puzzle for me for many years and thanks to Mike E. above I am better informed.

[HoGo]

Yet another name for this tree, neat! I have never been to Slovakia, but I do remember seeing, umm, duglaska tisolistá when visiting southern Germany, near Baden Baden as I recall.

I've seen the German and Dutch tree plantations. Sometimes looks like corn field, but with trees, all trees perfectly aligned but rarely larger than telegraph post. Then a large Harvester machine comes and cuts the whole place like combine.
I've seen Germans call p.Menziesii by various names including Douglas-Fichte (D-spruce), Douglas-Tanne (D-fir), Douglas-Kiefer (D-pine) or simple Douglasie (similar to our Douglaska)
They often mix very different species in those plantations, I remember seeing DUtch plantation with white pine (pinus strobus), Douglas-fir, blue spruce (picea pungens), Grand fir (abies grandis), White fir (a. concolor) together with domestic abies alba, picea abies and also some other deciduous teees both domestic and imported.

Were all of the "seed pods" or samaras in this configuration, or was it just a few on an otherwise standard tree? If the whole tree was like that, it would be very interesting to see.

Sure that would be of HIGH interest of arborists. Our local arboretum specializes on such trees (of local origin). They have a "collection" of various trees with special growth "defects". Like interesting pinus silvestris that naturally grows laying on the ground and only thin brnches point up. They have curly and birdseye maples and many "colored" varieties of many species.

[James Vwaal]

Interesting thread. I should check out this portion of the Cafe more often.

Back when I was a grad student in Forest Engineering at Oregon State (or is it Oregon-State?), I wrote a paper reporting research that my grad advisor and I did with Douglas-fir seedlings. I hate to add to the esoterica in this thread, but the proper way to reference Douglas-fir is:

Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco

This, I was told by the editor, was the proper way to reference the scientific name. My memory fails me on who Mirb. and Franco were, but they should get credit for straightening out the taxonomy of the tree species.

https://www.researchgate.net/publica...o_Microclimate

[Eric Oliver]

More eosterica.
Charles-Francois Brisseau de Mirbel.
I binged that.
Botanist.

[hank]

I love the way local questions in so many areas of interest are answered from our diverse community scattered across the globe. I can’t thank all of you enough for being who you are and what you have done to enrich my understanding of music, mandolins and how to make them. So many of you are or were professionals in interesting subjects that range all over the map but with a common good will and attitude of sharing. Thank you Scott and Dan for making it possible to bring together my favorite kind of subjects and experts to help us understand the leading particulars of our chosen art form.

[Jeff Hildreth]

Anyone recall the introduction of "German Silver Spruce" ?

Snake oil of the instrument grade timber hustled by German and American con artists of the 70s and 80s.

[j. condino]

OH YEAH!!!!

There was a fellow on the east slopes of Colorado who sawed Engleman spruce. He stamped it with his label / mark. He sold some to the old LMI. They sold a big load of it to a big German luthier supply place. They flipped it over, added their label, and then sold it back to folks in the US as "German Spruce". I bought some in the late '80s thinking it was European spruce, but when I flipped it over to the other side, I recognized the original Colorado sawyer's marks, as I bought some of the same log direct from him the year earlier!

I won't say the two sources in the US were at fault, but the German supplier definitely knew what they were doing.

Ted Davis told me stories of an old German immigrant that he met in West Virginia in the 1980s who helped him find some domestic red spruce and then haul them out by horse. He claimed that he cut and sold red spruce to the Germans for their violin market in the late 1930s and 1940s.

John Hamlett, can you verify this? I think that may have been back when you were just a pup cutting spruce with him and John Arnold. I know John lurks around here too.

Gonna be a whole lotta' Douglas fir on the market soon enough after this last week of "torrefying" 2 million acres in Oregon....safe wishes to all of my Oregon friends and family out there living through it....

[sunburst]

...John Hamlett, can you verify this?(

Wow, that was a long time ago! I'm lucky to remember what I heard yesterday...
I don't have a specific recollection of that particular story about selling spruce to the Germans but I don't doubt it. That guy had a lot of interesting stories!
I have some color slides from some of those spruce cutting trips. Unfortunately, I haven't found a good way to scan color slides so that I can have digital copies to post here.
(Mama don't take my Kodachrome away... Man, I loved that stuff...)

[MikeEdgerton]

... I haven't found a good way to scan color slides so that I can have digital copies to post here.
(Mama don't take my Kodachrome away... Man, I loved that stuff...)

https://www.amazon.com/KODAK-Mini-Di...NsaWNrPXRydWU=

[Sue Rieter]

I have something similar to this, but paid only $59 at Kohls a couple years ago. It gets the job done, and I can always tweak the color if needed in photoshop.