Old Growth Hemlock — A Marvelous Sight

greetings everyone I'm Adam heritton welcome to the woods of Western Pennsylvania it's a beautiful winter morning and I came here today because exactly one week ago I found some really cool trees in this Forest now up until a week ago I'd never been here before but I came here because I heard that there were some old growth trees about a mile and a half from this spot now they're not on any main trail so you have to bushwack a bit and climb up a steep hill and try to maneuver through these thick walls of Rota dendrin but it's worth it because once you get through all that there's some pretty big trees and I want to show you at least one of them and it might be my favorite tree no surprise it is the state tree of Pennsylvania it is Eastern Hemlock now this Forest is huge it's thousands and thousands and thousands of acres in size but that particular patch of old growth trees is less than 10 acres in size but it's still worth it getting over there so if you're interested in going on an adventure with me today stay tuned [Music] now before I show you an old growth Eastern Hemlock I want to show you this species at different stages of its life cycle to give you some context now just because you find an Eastern Hemlock that's smaller in size that doesn't necessarily mean that it's a very very young tree because e e Hemlock Suga canadensis is one of the most shade tolerant trees in North America so it does very well in the underst story of a dense Dark Forest and it's a slow growing tree as well so it can weigh it out in the underst story for decades and decades and decades even over 100 years and wait until there's an opening in the canopy and when sunlight comes through either directly on top of the tree or even from the side this tree will start to grow much more rapidly in height and in width so this this is a smaller Eastern Hemlock let's keep walking and I'll show you one that's a little bigger than this here's an Eastern Hemlock that's obviously much bigger than the first one I showed you now I don't know exactly how old this tree is but I would say it's somewhere between 100 and 200 years old now trees of this size Eastern hemlock trees of this size aren't that uncommon where I live but they're not super super abundant either now besides its size which obviously tells us that this is an older tree the bark pattern also tells us that this tree is getting older as Eastern hemlocks Age The Bark develops this very characteristic pattern of ridges and furrows but as the trees get even older than this the bark does something very interesting I don't see it on this tree but let's go see if we can find it on the old growth trees okay so I'm a little out of breath because this area is pretty difficult to explore there's no main trail so you got to bushwack a lot there are a lot of thick walls of rododendron you got to get on your knees the soil is very thin and this Hillside is very very very Steep and It All Leads down into the river below so I probably wouldn't take many groups into this area but I'm happy to bring it to you today and I finally found the tree that I was hoping I would see again and it's that one right there so let's go take a closer look okay so out of all the hemlock trees that I've shown you today this is obviously the biggest one this is the oldest one as well I don't know exactly how old this one is but I would say it's over 300 years old now hemlocks can live to be over 550 years old I think that's the oldest tree on record although there are unverifiable reports of hemlocks growing to be over 980 years old and as I said before this is a slow growing shade tolerant tree so it took a very long time for it to achieve this size now it might look kind of funny from this angle when you look at the bark pattern it might look like there's something wrong with this particular tree and I mentioned before that as trees tend to age they do something interesting with their bark they Slough it off so this is the sloughed off bark right here over here and on the other side you can see how the bark retains its ridges and furrows but as trees go beyond the mature stage into the old growth stage it's not uncommon to see this balding pattern on the trees now this Eastern hemlock tree is alive and you might be wondering why are you saying it's alive well first I wouldn't take you into an area and show you a dead old growth hemlock tree I would only show you living ones but I have to mention that it's alive because trees of this size of this species are very uncommon it's not that easy to find a tree of this size of this particular species at least in Western Pennsylvania for many reasons first throughout the 1800s and early 1900s nearly every tree of this size was cut down but today the Eastern Hemlock is contending with a different kind of threat it's an insect known as the hemlock woolly adelgid which was introduced from Asia into the United States decades ago it's a sap sucking insect and it kills a lot of trees of this size even smaller trees as well now I see a full Crown up there a nice healthy intact Crown it's nice and green so I don't think this tree is being attacked and I don't think it's being treated by any kind of insecticide because I don't see any mark on this tree that tells me that someone was in here treating it and this is in a pretty remote area so hopefully this tree stays alive for quite some time now when I was in this area last week I found a couple more old grow Eastern hemlocks some of them were a little smaller than this one some might have been bigger I'm not quite sure because I didn't measure any of them but I want to show you another one that's of a size comparable to this one so if you have a few more minutes and you want to continue the adventure follow me so here's another Eastern Hemlock an old growth Eastern Hemlock it's not the only other one in this Forest this particular patch of land has quite a few others but it's the one that I want to end with today so you could see the characteristic balding pattern right here which tells me this is a an older growth tree I would estimate it to be over 300 years old now Eastern Hemlock is considered to be a foundation species not many trees in the eastern United States especially here in Pennsylvania are considered to be Foundation species but Eastern Hemlock is so what is a foundation species well there are essentially three characteristics that a foundation species possesses a foundation species is one that creates and defines certain ecosystems a foundation species influences to an exceptional degree the distribution and abundance of associated plants and animals and a foundation species modulates core ecosystem processes and this is evident in eastern Hemlock stands where very little light is able to penetrate through to the forest floor and this keeps the soils and also the surrounding areas underneath the hemlock trees very cool an old growth Eastern Hemlock like this one right here is a marvelous site it's one of my favorite sites in the entire world there's nothing quite like being in the presence of a being a giant being like this one right here and I mentioned many times that it was very difficult to get in here so this is a rather inaccessible place but sometimes that's where the treasures exist sometimes that's where the best things in the world exist in those inaccessible places that we aren't used to exploring or we don't want to explore or we don't think we can explore but if we can get in there you'd be surprised is what you find you might not always find what you're looking for you might not even find old growth trees you might find smaller trees but that's okay because even the smaller trees the younger trees are still worthy of our attention and our appreciation thank you so much for joining me on this adventure today I appreciate it and if you enjoyed the video I encourage you to subscribe to the learn your land YouTube channel and to head on over to learn your land.com and sign up for the email newsletter so that we can stay in touch thank you again for watching I will see you on the next [Music] adventure

Channel: Learn Your Land

Views: 60,008

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Id: _Ol7mzbkTEI

Length: 8min 16sec (496 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 04 2024