Oh I will for sure. Benjamin told his FFA Teacher in the 8th Grade that he was going to win it all for him and you know how a teacher thinks of 8th Graders these days. But 3-4 long years later, Benjamin & his team accomplished it. Now his has made in the 90% most years. Some years with advanced classes & sports, Benjamin doesn't have room for FFA Forestry but studies on his own. Now there are other contemporaries of Benjamin in Welding, etc. so our Small School is really making a showing and to be honest most of these kids have a Grandfather as their role model. Sad but true.
We have the average, run of the mill trees mastered along with the Biltmore Stick, Pacing & Compass..... But tree types like the Bald Cypress, Basswood, Chittum, Fringe Tree(Old Man's Beard makes a great tea for Gall Bladder & Kidney issues), Sourwood, etc. is where we are focusing. I guess we need to throw in Live Oak too.....
But the sad part of winning State & going to Nationals is that Benjamin would be barred from competing his Senior Year. Tough Life Choice, like the many we go over day after day after day.
Serbus,
Raimey
rse
Had to comment when reading your list of trees. We moved from the Appalchian foothills in Kentucky when we retired. The land was hilly and dominated by oak, poplar and hickory forests, which took over from the American Chestnut after 1930. Elwvation was around 700 to 800 feet. Coming to Lexington I didn't really notice the difference in tree stands until we bought 30 some rural acres. The land here is mostly flat and 1000 feet in elevation. I had noticed that one large reservoir has a large concentration if cypress in the shallows. I looked through our land and found a few walnuts, a few poplar but they are few and far between. Wild cherry everywhere, osage orange everywhere, elm and ash in abundance. Butternut was a common building material here in the old days. Rocky land is full of hemlock. The tree you mentioned that I now hate is the sourwood. I didn't know what it was (had never seen one before) and uit is everywhere.An arborist for a tree trimming company identified it for me. It is my most detestable tree. Grows tall and thick everywhere quickly then develops interior rot and eventually rots completely through and comes down in a moderate wind. It is so heavy and waterlogged that when it falls it does massive damage. I have cut up several that fell and when trying to buck the tree, the inner cavities have filled with water and it ejects copious amounts of the foulest smelling liquid I have encountered around a tree.
I was amazed that we moved 90 miles and 300 feet in elevation and encountered a plant culture that is like an alien universe compared to where we moved from. The bio culture where we lived continues for hundreds of miles eastward with hardly any change. The study of biodiversity in closely linked areas is really interesting.
