Notes and Queries, Vol. IV, Number 108, November 22, 1851 / A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.

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VOL. IV.—No. 108.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22. 1851.
Price Threepence. Stamped Edition, 4 d.
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Alexander von Humboldt, in his work entitled Views of Nature (pp. 220. 268-276. ed. Bohn), has some interesting remarks on the age of trees.
In vegetable forms (he says) massive size is indicative of age; and in the vegetable kingdom alone are age and the manifestation of an ever-renewed vigour linked together.
Following up this remark, he refers to specimens of the Baobab ( Adansonia digitata ), with trunks measuring more than thirty feet in diameter, the age of which is estimated by Adanson at 5150 years. All calculations of the age of a tree, founded merely on the size of its trunk , are, however, uncertain, unless the law of its growth, and the limits of the variation producible by peculiar circumstances, are ascertained, which, in the case of the Adansonia, have not been determined. For the same reason, the calculation of 2,500 years for a gigantic cypress in Persia, mentioned by Evelyn in his Silva , is of no value.
Humboldt afterwards refers to the more certain estimations yielded by annular rings , and by the relation found to exist between the thickness of the layer of wood and the duration of growth; which, he adds, give us shorter periods for our temperate northern zone. The calculation of the age of a tree, founded on its successive rings, appears to be quite certain; and whenever these can be counted, the age of a tree can be determined without risk of error. Humboldt quotes a statement from Endlicher, that in Lithuania linden (or lime) trees have been felled which measured 87 feet round, and in which 815 annular rings have been counted. The section of a trunk of a silver fir, which grew near Barr, is preserved in the Museum at Strasburg: its diameter was eight feet close to the ground, and the number of rings is said to amount to several hundreds.