The Age Of Trees

The Age of Trees.

   "Penn's treaty tree - the treaty elm- does that still exist?"  a young man asked the antiquary. "No," said the old man: "it was blown down on the night of March 3, 1810. This tree, as its concentric circles showed, was 283 years old; no great age that for a tree. There is in England, at Cowthorpe, an oak that is supposed to be 800 years old. The English yews often reach an almost incredible age. The celebrated Ankerwyke yew is 1,100 years old, and there are others of an equal age. Some of our American pines can hold their own in respect of age with the European trees. Oregon pines on being cut down have shown as many as 1,100 concentric rings running from the heart out to the bark. Do you know who first showed us how to tell a tree's age by its rings? It was Montaigne, the essayist." 

--Philadelphia Record.