Leaders

Were we speaking about leaders? Maybe it was only me speaking about leaders. I do seem to have an ongoing dialog running through my head about stories that I want to share with my readers, how I would like to craft the piece, what would seem interesting in a post, can I get a picture that describes my adventures,  ya da, ya da, ya da…

Back to leaders, I was in the corner of the woods that I don’t get to very often. It is the north facing side of the forest, out past where the trail cam is situated to watch over our caged seedlings and beyond where we logged in the last few years. The skid road has been narrowed by the amount of vegetation that has grown in since the last time we have done any thinning of timber in this section.

Many of the trees in this area are 80 plus years old and are well over 100 feet tall, we have thinned this spot several times over the years in order to open up the canopy for the trees to continue their growth. Below the tall trees is a thick carpet of seedlings ranging from one year to twenty years old, some barely visible to about fifteen feet in height.

The trees are very happy here. They are growing quickly and are vibrant green in color. They send up one long stringer in the spring before long branches sprout out from the sides at the base of the new growth. The long stringer is referred to as the leader. One can estimate the age of a tree from counting the spaces between the sprouted branches, each space between would be one year of growth. I estimate that some of these fast growing trees have 20 inch leaders.

The tree on the left had an issue with the leader sometime earlier this year. It could have been broken in a wind, a tall neighbor may have thrown a broken branch his/her way, or a bird may have landed just so as it was trying to grow. The leader somehow got thwarted on his rise to the sky so the next one in line jumped in to fix the problem.

This tiny issue will remain in this spot on the tree for the life of the plant. 100 years from now, if it is lucky enough to continue to grow in this spot, will have a defect at this spot in the timber and will have a curve, bubble or bump in the wood affecting the smooth growth pattern. If the damage is severe enough, the tree could send off several leaders to compensate for the fallen leader making several tops out of the single one. If that is the case, this tree would never be able to make good timber no matter how old it gets. Time will tell if this defect is going to be an issue for this young tree.