Yesterday I drove through Yarmouth, Maine, and stopped by the site where Herbie the New England Champion American Elm (Ulmus americana) had lived for over two hundred years before meeting his end this past January (see this post for the story). I wanted to see Herbie’s stump and get a better idea of what 217 years of tree age looked like in plan view.
It was hard to get a clear measure of the stump. It was cleanly cut across the root flare, and there were no signs of internal decay at the cut line, which indicates that no root damage — or none of the kind that travels up the trunk and compromises it — had affected the tree in its life.
This tree was big. A slice from the bottom of the butt, mounted on table-height legs, would be big enough to seat at least a dozen people quite comfortably, if a bit irregularly. The following photos show my attempts at comparative scale.
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From a distance, the spot where Herbie stood looks like a small paved dais in a big open space.
A pair of Felcos and a water bottle for scale, and still it's hard to fathom the stump's size.
Hmm. This yellow nursery caliper gauge, maxed out at 4 1/4", doesn't come close to an appropriate scale. The school bus in the background ran past before I could catch its image right in front of the stump, but it begins to suggest a comparison.
This angle doesn't help much either, though it certainly illustrates how Herbie dealt with grade change -- he just grew over it.
People walking by help with scale.
Eureka! The handy measuring tape, laid across the stump's widest part, gives at least some numeric sense of size.
Here's a crop from that last photo, showing the stump measuring at its widest point 9'-2". Herbie had plenty of root room, among other advantages, so he could grow to this size.
Deborah Howe
Taking Place In The Trees 