Tasmania's giant ash trees may be the world's tallest

[eppur_se_muova]

Presented by
Jane Palmer

Stephen Sillett's laboratory is dangling 90 metres above the ground. It is an intricate web of ropes and instruments strung up in the branches of a tree. And in the windy conditions that plague Tasmania's forests, it can be distinctly precarious.

"You can hear big gusts come through like freight trains pounding along their way toward you," says Sillett, a forest ecologist at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. "As the gust hits, then the whole tree top just lays over and there's big old blows. It's amazing."

The trees in question are mountain ash, the tallest flowering trees in the world. They are not quite the tallest trees of any kind: that record belongs to the coast redwoods of the western US. But that might be because things have been skewed against the mountain ash.

It turns out that humans have been cutting them down in their prime, and they may have reached even more prodigious heights in the past. If conditions improve, might they one day beat out the redwoods?

Just how tall do Tasmania's mountain ash trees grow? As part of his research, Sillett and his colleagues re-measured the largest tree on the island state, in December 2013. This towering titan boasts a height of 98.8m, 3m taller than the London tower that houses Big Ben.
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more: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141222-the-worlds-new-tallest-tree WARNING: Firefox does not like the BBC's "new style" Web pages ...



book rec: http://www.powells.com/biblio/9780812975598

http://www.betterworldbooks.com/preston-the-wild-trees-H0.aspx?SearchTerm=preston+the+wild+trees (Donate a book for each book you buy)

ETA: photo "tours" at Sillett's Web site (scroll down for E. regnans): http://www2.humboldt.edu/redwoods/photos/

[Kaleva]

1. Other then using Nazi measurements, a good article. Thanks for posting.

[eppur_se_muova]

2. Metric units were introduced by French revolutionaries ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_system

more likely Communards than National Socialists.

[Posteritatis]

4. ... what? (nt)

[Kaleva]

6. I got it from a spoof about universal health care on Youtube

The character was against adopting a Canadian health care system and the use of Nazi measurements (meters, liters, etc.).

[n2doc]

3. Mere Dwarfs

The tallest trees in the world are redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens), which tower above the ground in California. These trees can easily reach heights of 300 feet (91 meters).

Among the redwoods, a tree named Hyperion dwarfs them all. The tree was discovered in 2006, and is 379.7 feet (115.7 m) tall.

Shortly after it was measured and deemed the world's tallest, a writer for the New Yorker climbed close to the top and described what it was like to stand there.

"A wind had begun to blow, and the top of Hyperion swayed back and forth," wrote Richard Preston. "The branches here were spindly, and were encrusted with many kinds of lichen."

Other giant redwoods include Helios, which is just a shade smaller than Hyperion, at 374.3 feet (114.1 m), as well as Icarus (371.2 feet or 113.1 m) and Daedalus (363.4 feet or 110.8 m). The exact locations of many of these giants is kept secret to prevent vandalism.

http://www.livescience.com/28729-tallest-tree-in-world.html

[eppur_se_muova]

7. For now ...

all the tallest ones have been chopped down, but there were 19th century reports of some over 400' tall. Since they grow as much as a meter a year, some now-living trees, if protected, could reach this height within our lifetimes.

The "star" of Preston's book is the same Steve Sillet as in the OP. Check out his Web page. He's responsible for discovering and measuring most of the tallest known redwoods.

[Thor_MN]

5. If I were 90m off the ground in a wind gust,

I would definitely be a tree hugger. Right after the wind, I'd be tempted to kiss my ash.