BIG

Liriodendron tulipifera

23-OCT-2025

How it feels in the once primeval valley, Joyce Kilmer, SNP.

Chestnut blight came and stayed, gone were the behemoths that fed an ecosystem gone a keystone. Trees that rival sequoia in the east and fed everyone. Then a soft scale came to the cucumber magnolia, a slow growing tower, whose only example of what once was exists in northern ohio. Years pass then suddenly ash borer ravages the pumpkin ash and American ash. Adelgid creeps in with elongate scale on our mighty hemlock, beech receive nematodes, red oaks wilt after storms attract a beatle vectoring a fungus, pines get a beatle too. Helene brings mudslides and wind thrown dead snags. The forest is nothing but dead fall and rhododendron hells with the last sentinels being tulip poplar towering 180 feet into the sky.

Old growth cross section with growth rings. Pinky for scale (before canopy opened up and we see more size increase we hit 84 years in the narrow growth rings.) Making this Over 100 years within the first 2 inches of radial growth.