A couple of weeks ago, we had a major storm blow through with straight-line winds of almost 90 miles per hour. It knocked over power lines, corn, blew off shingles and took down hundreds of old trees. It was a mess, and for miles, you could see farmers with loaders and forks carrying off piles of branches. My nieces, on the other hand, found this thrilling because they could finally go count the rings on the tree stumps in Grandpa’s back yard.

As a tree grows, it produces new layers of wood around the trunk, just under the bark. If a tree is cut down, the layers are visible in a cross section. The layers appear as a set of concentric circles known as tree rings.

In general, one layer of wood grows each year. Each layer consists of two colors of wood: light-colored “earlywood” that grows in the spring and summer plus darker, denser “latewood” from the fall and winter.

Tree rings vary in size each year depending upon the environmental conditions that the tree experiences. For most locations, tree rings will be wider during years of abundant rainfall and narrower during times of drought.

By counting back from the year a living tree was cut, it is possible to determine the date of tree rings with reasonable accuracy. It ended up that this one was 19 years old. Funny – I don’t remember them planting it!

Until we walk again…