Ooooo Oooooo Oooh, I'm On Fire

Burning Love

I learned a lot.

Out in California, there was a lot to see and do. One trip, up to the Sequoia National Park, and King's Canyon National Park, and I learned a bit about Giant Sequoia Trees.

For instance, some of these trees carry giant burn scars. This one, pictured, is about 15 feet tall. Most of these scars are not from forest fires. It turns out, they have done a little studying, and they bark and outer layers of these trees are so dense and hard, that it takes a sustain fire, over days, and extremely hot, to burn a tree. So, the parks clear out any dead wood, branches, tree litter, etc, from around the base of these trees, to eliminate most of the fire threat.

In 1950, a tree fell dead, and the park took time to study the inside rings, to find out when the fire occurred to cause the large burn scar:

A comparatively small fire scar was fully exposed, but that one fire scar represented the total damage of at least four separate fires.

After each fire, new wood grew outward to cover part of the scar. Each successive fire destroyed part of the new growth, and burned deeper into the tree. Thus, a cross section of the scar today shows layers of charred wood alternating with new growth, and reveals a fairly complete record of the fires. There well may have been more fires for some may have destroyed completely the record of earlier ones. This tree records the following fires:

The first fire occurred 489 years ago, about 1465.
The second fire occurred 91 years later, about 1556.
The third fire occurred 89 years later, about 1645.
The last fire occurred 148 years later, about 1802.