This is one of my new favorite books. I don't have a Forestry degree ( English) so I'd always wonder what some of the trees on my property were. Now I knew a poplar from pine, and could pick out a maple, but honestly there were a lot of trees that I didn't know. So I picked up this little gem for ten bucks and use it all the time. Now I can tell a sugar maple from a soft maple, which is good when you want to tap trees for syrup, which is coming right up!
One interesting thing that has come up recently. I sometimes use butternut for chair seats, and unfortunately it is being killed off by a fungus. Well, I was surprised to learn that a clients son, Phil Crystal, is in graduate school at Purdue and he is studying, drum roll, butternut fungus. I've been emailing him and he was pretty excited that Maine has a population of butternut trees. There are not a lot of trees, but there are some. And Phil is hoping to study this population to find out if they are hybrids that my be resistant to the fungus. Too many of our trees have been killed off already, chestnut, elm, beech and now butternut. Hopefully some good can come out of this. And pick up the book and take a walk thru the woods, you'll never know what you'll find.
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