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Anonymous Fri 13 Dec 2024 02:15:24 No.2793881 View View Reply Original Report

Quoted By: >>2793935 >>2793936 >>2793952 >>2794110 >>2794815

>>2879853
I have a question and I need the answer
Let's say you have a tree that could live to be 1000 years old, and you take a cutting of it when it's 700 years old
Does the successfully rooted cutting die in 300 years, or in another 1000 years?
Does cutting an old plant artificially age it, in whole or partially, or does cutting an old plant restart the timeline of growth so to speak?

I posted this on /diy/ and the sole answer told me I might find a more definitive answer here instead

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 13 Dec 2024 07:34:24 No.2793935 Report

Quoted By: >>2793936 >>2794122 >>2794129

>>2793881
i can answer this for you and give you some nice trivia
the short answer is that taking a cutting essentially restarts the clock on how old a plant lives
the long answer is that old age doesnt exist for a plant. there isnt an "age" that a specific plant species dies at, its due to other enviromental factors. its hard to explain really, but if you wanted to you could theoretically get a plant of a species that only typically lives a decade and extend that to as long as you can care about it. there are bonsais of species that only live a decade or so but have lasted centuries due to the extreme care
also regarding your cuttings, recently i saw a tree (an apple tree) from a cutting that was first planted in 1200 (yes, the year 1200, a thousand years ago) and its still going strong

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 13 Dec 2024 07:51:22 No.2793936 Report

Quoted By:

>>2793881
the cuttings are new growth, unlike how a tree can have old cells, like the inner wood itself
some plants won't turn out though, depending on how &/or when they were cut, because of chemical signals in the cells telling them to die or not grow, and some accrue certain genetic information that do the same as chemical signals instead
>>2793935
age does exist for plants, but its more akin to someone whos old, but able to make use of stem cells, its new growth
its like the cancer samples of old people who are long dead, all while the cancer cells are still bred for research

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 13 Dec 2024 12:40:04 No.2793952 Report

Quoted By:

>>2793881
Guy from /diy/ checking in. Told ya.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 14 Dec 2024 04:04:30 No.2794110 Report

Quoted By:

>>2793881
This is a biology question. There are things called clonal colonies which are individuals that started rooting once its heavy branches fell into the ground and the growth buds specialized into roots, a new root system developed that could self sustain; or in the case of herbs they have an underground stem called rhizome that spreads new root and leaves wherever it goes along the surface. Plants mitigate damage through segmentation, they basically scar off the whole damaged chunk instead of attempting to repair it, thus the original trunk may get infected by a fungus and die, but the branch that developed into its own separate tree will live on. It will be genetically the same plant, but you can't think of it in the traditional way of a unique organism like an animal.

Plants are basically tubes that grow inwards and outwards. Said tube can grow tubes to the sides, and the limit to how it can self sustain is given by the physical properties of how much water and nutrients it can soak up all the way to the top. If you want to know what the organism closest to us with similar characteristics is you can think of jellyfish, or an extinct ancestor of the jellyfish closely related to sponges.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 14 Dec 2024 06:16:33 No.2794120 Report

Quoted By: >>2794130 >>2794142

Trees essentially limit out at heights, not ages. Eventually the tree gets so tall it can't any longer push water up to the very top of the tree, and it dies. The very tips of the top branches are where plant growth hormones are produced. Without those growth hormones, the tree can't survive. So if the top essentially dies of thirst, the whole tree dies, usually shortly after.

If you were to cut the leader off a tree, the very top shoot, you might kill it. Though some trees will send up a new leader. The growth may be stunted for a number of seasons, but it might survive, depending on the variety, age, and growing conditions.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 14 Dec 2024 06:33:24 No.2794122 Report

Quoted By:

>>2793935
Are things better in 2224, anon?

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 14 Dec 2024 08:31:24 No.2794129 Report

Quoted By: >>2794156

>>2793935
I have a 50 year old African violet that's never been repotted.
The number 1 killer of trees on earth is humans.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 14 Dec 2024 08:35:01 No.2794130 Report

Quoted By:

>>2794120
Trees push and pull water to the top. It's several forces working together and evaporation from the foliage is part of that. I've never ever heard of an example of a tree dying because it got too tall. Almost all old growth on earth were killed by humans, not gravity.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 14 Dec 2024 12:01:46 No.2794142 Report

Quoted By: >>2794201 >>2794764

>>2794120
I have a large beech tree in my yard, and the top is dead, but the side limbs are still growing. I don't know too much of its history as I have only lived in this house a year, but the "main top" part looks like it has been dead for a very long time. I certainly hope the rest of the tree doesnt die.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 14 Dec 2024 14:43:52 No.2794156 Report

Quoted By: >>2794157 >>2794197 >>2795248

>>2794129
What is the number one planter of trees?

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 14 Dec 2024 14:51:15 No.2794157 Report

Quoted By:

>>2794156
Gravity

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 14 Dec 2024 20:40:44 No.2794197 Report

Quoted By:

>>2794156
Trees are the #1 planter of trees... by a large margin. Foresters are retarded and loggers are cancer. Most people kill starts of their yard trees by mowing or uprooting them while "weeding" and trees are so prolific at propagating that foresters have to spray to kill off the trees they don't like after clearcutting.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 14 Dec 2024 20:49:01 No.2794201 Report

Quoted By: >>2794263 >>2794820

>>2794142
Most deciduous trees evolved to shed under extreme weather conditions like wind or snows.

Whoever made that post doesn't know what they're talking about. There is no height limit to trees, they grow slower in height as they age due to surface to volume ratio. As the diameter increases a tree will grow MORE annually but the growth will be less noticeable because it is spread out over more surface area. All the old notions of how a tree gets water to the top were debunked a long time ago and whoever posted that is working on 1950s research... Probably a logger trying to justify cutting down old growth by lying about trees being "too tall so I gotta cuttem' "

Topping trees doesn't kill them because of "growth". What it does is exposes the heartwood that is normally protected by the bark and outer layers to the elements significantly increasing the potential for disease or infestation--and that kills them.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 15 Dec 2024 03:45:06 No.2794263 Report

Quoted By: >>2794267

>>2794201
Good to know. It's a beautiful (if unconventional) tree. I've just gone back to college for a forestry degree, so hopefully soon I will have more in depth knowledge. This semester was all geneds though.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 15 Dec 2024 04:13:09 No.2794267 Report

Quoted By: >>2794274

>>2794263
You won't learn anything useful about trees in forestry. It is more of a certification to manage clearcutting. It isn't biology botany or even dendrology and certainly won't talk about the forest mycological substrate or species diversity beyond something superficial. I've talked to foresters as well as people working in test forests for Warehouser and they know fuckall about trees beyond the most common methods to cut them down wholesale.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 15 Dec 2024 04:30:16 No.2794274 Report

Quoted By: >>2794289

>>2794267
Not quite, it's restoration forestry. Though it doesn't surprise me that someone who works for weyerhauser doesn't know more than the best way to cut trees down (that is their business.) I also don't expect college to give me a perfect understanding, but it will provide the foundation I need to get into the field I want and be able to make sense of what I will be experiencing right off the bat.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 15 Dec 2024 06:58:04 No.2794289 Report

Quoted By:

>>2794274
Good luck with that. I hope they're talking about wetlands; watersheds and beavers. If you care about forests than the number 1 enemy of forests are building code.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 17 Dec 2024 19:32:52 No.2794764 Report

Quoted By:

>>2794142
Most old trees lose their tops. That's why old trees all have that gnarled squat look with a base that seems too thick for the canopy.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 17 Dec 2024 22:00:06 No.2794815 Report

Quoted By:

>>2793881
The tree would live another 1,000 years theoretically. It's basically a new tree. There will be some differences in how the root system grows though so a rooted cutting isn't going to grow a tap the same way etc etc. But my understanding is that it is not indifferent from growing a new one from seed.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 17 Dec 2024 22:11:27 No.2794820 Report

Quoted By:

>>2794201
The trees are all going to grow to maximize foliage access to sun. I think what happens is that the physical/mechanical ability of a tree to 1. Hold itself up 2. Put foliage on branches 3. Spread roots 4. Pump enough water out of the ground is limited to the structural integrity of the tree's material and the amount of energy, nutrients, and water it's systems can realistically draw.

The trees are going to seek sunlight. So in most scenarios they will piddle around for decades as little understory seedlings and then explode up into a column of light when one finally opens. This gets you a tall relatively thin trunk. Once they hit the canopy they umbrella out to get as much sun as possible. As you can imagine this will make a tree more likely to break out it's top in the long run but this is a common shape. Any tree that has a fork low in the main trunk will likely have a shorter life span. Any tree that leans laterally seeking light will have a shorter life span (generally).

If a mature tree loses its top it will send up shoots because it has a large root system and not enough foliage to draw sun. The tree is seeking an equilibrium between water, nutrients, and sunlight. It has to put on more roots to grow more wood and foliage. If you damage a trees roots you need to cut back the foliage to keep equilibrium etc. I DO think there is a natural limitation to how big a tree can get because there is physically only so much water a root system can suck up and there is a realistic physical size limit to a root system just based on the ability of the material to physically suck up and transport water over spaces and distances. Likewise there is a physical limitation to how much weight a woody stem or branch can realistically hold up.

Your biggest stud trees are all going to be open sun specimens. Trees in fence rows. Trees on the edge of a wood, in yards, parks, clearings etc.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 20 Dec 2024 01:30:44 No.2795248 Report

Quoted By:

>>2794156
Squirrels.

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