Paul J.
ArboristSite Lurker
Ian made me aware of some large diameter basswoods that were measured in the past in Douglas County's Anna-Gene County Park in the far northwestern corner of Wisconsin, just southeast of Superior. It is on a peninsula on the north end of Lyman Lake at the end of East Lyman Road off County Highway L between Highways 35 and 53. It is a nice, mature sugar maple/basswood forest with some yellow birch and green ash. It transitions to pine at the lake front.
I couldn't find any basswoods as big as those on record anywhere on the Anna-Gene County Park. There is sign of quite a few large basswood that have fallen over time. However, basswood decays very rapidly, so there was no evidence of any that big in recent years. There were other big, healthy basswood in the area. Some of them were multi-stemmed coppices, some of them have lost some of the cohort stems, so maybe what they measured was a fused, multi-stemmed coppice. All the bigger trees were clustered just southern part of the highest point on the property, on the east side of the "middle trail". There is a trail that starts on the northeast corner of the parking lot that loops around the property, to the tip of the peninsula, and then back to the northwest corner of the parking lot. Just a few hundred feet from the northwest corner of the parking lot, the middle trail spurs to the north through the middle of the property as a shortcut to the tip of the peninsula. Along the middle trail are the biggest trees and best varieties of wildflowers. Anna-Gene County Park was alive with wildflowers, including violets, jack-in-the-pulpits, trilliums, and more. The biggest single stemmed basswoods that I found had the following circumference/height/avg. spread/score measurements:
103", 97', 43', 211 points
113", 96', 45', 220 points, had smaller root sprout not in the measurement
118", 92', 36', 219 points, other coppice stem had recently fallen
There was a similar sized sugar maple among them that measured:
109", 84', 48', 205 points
And a green ash nearby that measured:
106", 106', 46', 223 points
Unfortunately, the woods was heavily infested with ticks and fierce biting black flies, both of which left me marked with scars for the near future. I am not sure if any of these are worth nominating, but they are noteworthy for the area - where the boreal forest meets the forest-prairie tension zone, in a county dominated by pine barrens and post logging fire aspens.
I couldn't find any basswoods as big as those on record anywhere on the Anna-Gene County Park. There is sign of quite a few large basswood that have fallen over time. However, basswood decays very rapidly, so there was no evidence of any that big in recent years. There were other big, healthy basswood in the area. Some of them were multi-stemmed coppices, some of them have lost some of the cohort stems, so maybe what they measured was a fused, multi-stemmed coppice. All the bigger trees were clustered just southern part of the highest point on the property, on the east side of the "middle trail". There is a trail that starts on the northeast corner of the parking lot that loops around the property, to the tip of the peninsula, and then back to the northwest corner of the parking lot. Just a few hundred feet from the northwest corner of the parking lot, the middle trail spurs to the north through the middle of the property as a shortcut to the tip of the peninsula. Along the middle trail are the biggest trees and best varieties of wildflowers. Anna-Gene County Park was alive with wildflowers, including violets, jack-in-the-pulpits, trilliums, and more. The biggest single stemmed basswoods that I found had the following circumference/height/avg. spread/score measurements:
103", 97', 43', 211 points
113", 96', 45', 220 points, had smaller root sprout not in the measurement
118", 92', 36', 219 points, other coppice stem had recently fallen
There was a similar sized sugar maple among them that measured:
109", 84', 48', 205 points
And a green ash nearby that measured:
106", 106', 46', 223 points
Unfortunately, the woods was heavily infested with ticks and fierce biting black flies, both of which left me marked with scars for the near future. I am not sure if any of these are worth nominating, but they are noteworthy for the area - where the boreal forest meets the forest-prairie tension zone, in a county dominated by pine barrens and post logging fire aspens.
