235 Years Later

摘要

With a circumference exceeding 15 feet and standing 148 feet tall, it had reigned as the champion loblolly pine in the National Register of Big Trees since 1993. But last March its shallow root system gave in to soggy soil and strong winds and the giant tumbled to its death on Potlatch Corp. land in the Saline River bottoms in Cleveland County, not far north of here. Potlatch foresters Rob Loomis and Ron Neely counted the rings from a trunk wafer cut 26 feet from the base and put the tree's age at 235. It was a sapling before the U.S. was founded.