Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 December 1893 — Age of Trees. [ARTICLE]

Age of Trees.

Elm, 300 years; ivy, 335 years; maple, 516 years; larch, 576 years; orange, 630 years; cypress, 800 years; olive, 800 years; walnut, 900 years; Oriental plane, 1,000 years; lime, 1,100 years; spruce, 1,200 years; oak, 1,500 years; cedar, 2,0C0 years; yew, 3,200 years. The way in which the ages of these trees have teen ascertained leaves no doubt of its correctness. In some few cases the data has been furnished by historical records and by traditions, but the botanical archaeologists have a resource independent of either, and, when carefully used, infallible. Of all the forms of nature, trees alone disclose their ages candidly and freely. In the stems oi trees which have branches and leaves with netted veins —in all exogens, as the botanist would say—the increase takes place by means of an annual deposit of wood, spread in an even layer upon the surface of the preceding one. In the earlier periods of life trees increase much faster than when adult—the oak, for instance, grows more rapidly between the twentieth and thirtieth years—and when old the annual deposits considerably diminish, so that the strata are thinner and the rings proportionately closer. Some trees slacken in rate of growth at a very early period of life, and layers of oak become thinner after 40, those of the elm after 50, those of the yew after 60.