Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Lynn Canyon ... and a question

Lynn Canyon; wonderful place.  There's a few images in the post to tempt you to find out more or even visit.  Finding the park is real easy, and there was plenty of parking.  The walks are pretty easy, but are quite long and take a few hours to complete ... mainly because of the views you'll encounter.

One thing that fascinated me was the way that trees seemed to grow out of other trees.  There's an example of this in the image to the left, but it was quite a common sight.

Tree stumps, probably the result of felling as the tops of the trunks seemed quite level, have new trees sprouting out of the top. How did this happen?  Does the park ranger embed seeds in the old stumps or do seeds fall naturally into cracks in the old stumps?  Usually there was only one "new" tree, which sort of favours the park ranger answer, but I really don't know.

I can't recall seeing this before in NZ or the UK, and am not sure if it was a particular type of tree.  Anyway, if you know if it's a natural occurrence or not please let me know.

Should you be expert in these matters, and it's a human intervention, you could perhaps let me know why and for how long this activity has occurred.

I'll close this post with a couple more images from Lynn Canyon.  Let me know what you think.

2 comments:

  1. Circle of life, as far as I'm aware, it's recycling. Coal was created from the same process times many generations of trees, without Man removing what would have fallen and fed more than one new tree.
    I'm no expert, but planters don't plant seeds. Wildlife will forage and find seeds on the forest floor, and consume them on the stump? Squirrels and birds - who also pass seeds on an observation stump? That's my guess.
    Delicious shots of Lynn Canyon too. Nice.

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  2. I like the idea of squirrels or birds dropping the seeds from the vantage point of the tree stump. Sounds very feasible.

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