Jul 31, 2025 · The Klukwan giant holds the national record for black cottonwood diameter. Its nearest rival, a tree near Salem, Oregon, does hold the national height record. The Klukwan giant belies the belief that trees tend to get smaller the farther north one goes. Both balsam poplar and cottonwood have value for fuel wood, pulp and lumber.

Jul 31, 2025 · Interior Alaskan forests have only six native tree species: white spruce, black spruce, quaking aspen, balsam poplar, larch (tamarack) and paper birch. Northern Canadian forests have all of those, plus jack pine, balsam fir and lodgepole pine. Since northern Canada and interior Alaska share the same grueling climate and extremes of daylength, why are the …

Jul 31, 2025 · Witches' broom on spruce trees is caused by a rust disease (a kind of fungus disease). The rust lives on the spruce tree throughout the year. Each spring, small yellow pustules appear on the new needles of the broom. A strong sweet odor, which is easily recognizable, usually accompanies the maturation of these pustules.

Aug 16, 2010 · The tree leans uphill, and its trunk is 45 inches around. When I hugged it, I could barely clasp my hands together. The largest black spruce in Alaska is a lucky tree, because its neighbors to the north are gone, removed in the mid-1990s during the installation of a power line.

Jul 23, 2021 · A tree near one of our campsites had a crack at its base through which we could pass the folded saw. Yet the tree was still alive, with just one rope of cambium — the outer bark that transports water and nutrients — snaking up the trunk. A few of its blue-green feathery leaves flagged from the top of what otherwise looked like a snag.

May 25, 2023 · The most plentiful moose food in the state — and probably Alaska’s most numerous tree — is the feltleaf willow, which was once called the Alaska willow. As its name implies, the feltleaf sprouts canoe-shaped green leaves that feel fuzzy on the underside.

Jul 31, 2025 · Then using tree ring dating methods, it may be possible to date earthquakes occurring before historical records were kept. The ability to identify and date very large earthquakes occurring within the past thousand years is important in establishing earthquake risk and for predicting future earthquakes.

Jul 31, 2025 · I eventually found a tree with a spiral lightning mark and it followed the spiral grain exactly. One tree, of course, proves nothing. "But why should the tree spiral? More speculation here: Foliage tends to be thicker on the south side of the tree because of better sunlight.

Jul 11, 2025 · A tree's age can be easily determined by counting its growth rings, as any Boy or Girl Scout knows. Annually, the tree adds new layers of wood which thicken during the growing season and thin during the winter. These annual growth rings are easily discernible (and countable) in cross-sections of the tree's trunk. In good growing years, when sunlight and …

Jun 18, 2021 · The two-acre exotic tree plantation is part of a much-larger “boreal arboretum” on the UAF campus, which mostly consists of native spruce, birch, aspen, poplar and willow trees. Having borrowed the key from a researcher with UAF’s Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, Woodward has invited me to join him inside the chain-link fence.