When I was younger, I was more interested in “old growth” trees. The sheer size and mass of large trees is awesome. My interest in human history went hand-in-hand with large trees. I would imagine what that tree had “seen” within its long life. Perhaps it dated back to the Civil War or earlier to settlers and Native Americans.

While it was neat to just think about, I have since learned that not all large trees are as old as I once imagined, but sometimes fast-growing. In any case, it still takes time to grow wood and some species take longer to grow than others. A good example is hemlock: If you find a 50-inch-plus hemlock, it’s probably well over 130 years old.

Other clues might indicate an granddaddy tree besides its circumference. For instance, sugar maple’s bark “hinges” like a door or breaks into long protruding ridges running parallel to the trunk. As it ages, its bark begins to flake or exfoliate perpendicularly like red maple. Yellow birch is another tree that shows its age as it ages. It starts out as you might imagine, with yellow or golden papery bark. But its youthful sheen breaks down into large, blocky burnt flakes resembling that of black cherry. If you look closely at its newest growth near the ends of upper branches, its identity is once again revealed by golden papery bark.

Large, old trees still stop me in my tracks. They are also so much more magnificent in person. Photos never seem to capture their size, mass, or crown size. In addition to old, singular, or individually growing trees are old “forest types” and “stands” that also draw my interest. One is the hemlock stand, a stand of trees that share similar sizes, ages, and species compositions. While a forest type may share a set of species, they may include various ages and sizes. The “burnt over” areas I am referring to are more like “forest types” while the hemlock ones are more so stands. Let’s cover each of these “ancient” forest stands/types.

Ancient Hemlock Stands

Hemlock can grow the oldest of the tree species found in the Catskills. I have read that in nearby Pennsylvania, the oldest known hemlock was about 800 years old. Therefore, it’s reasonable that some of our largest hemlocks could be between 200 and 400 years old. In addition, hemlock is built to last. Unlike trees that require sunlight from artificial or natural disturbances, hemlock can tolerate shade for decades before gaining access to the heavens. It simply outlives its competitors in an undisturbed forest. In other words, it doesn’t need humans and their pyromaniac thumbs to light fires.

However, hemlock stands containing large hemlock trees are a blast from the past for two main reasons. One is that many hemlocks are succumbing to hemlock woolly adelgid and elongate hemlock scale, two insects from Asia that suck the life out from its needles. Normally, trees give up the ghost in fewer than eight years.

The next reason is the leather-making industry that expanded in the early- to mid-19th century. Hemlock bark was peeled in the summer months and hauled out in winter to local tanneries. The bark was ground up and used to make tea or “liquor” in tanning cowhides for leather products. Many of the most accessible—and not so accessible—stands of hemlock were cut during this time. Some of the more remote or inaccessible stands still exist. But just because a tree is old doesn’t necessarily mean it will be tall and large. Only on the better-growing sites will one find trees that can attain size. In other words, the trick is to find hemlocks that were both overlooked by the bark-peelers and growing on good sites where “largeness” can be attained.

I can think of a few places where hemlocks check both boxes mentioned above. These are special places. The conditions there are what many might describe as “cathedral-like.” The forest floor is mostly free of vegetation barring where one of these behemoths have fallen, allowing sunlight for young plants and trees—mainly black or yellow birch, or hemlock—to grow. Oftentimes, yellow birch will use downed hemlocks as “nurse logs” and grow on top of them. After the log rots away, it leaves behind the stilted roots of a funny looking yellow birch. Old hemlock stands in the Catskills often grow on “tip-up mounds” or “pit-and-mound” areas. When trees are blown over from ancient hurricanes or micro-bursts, their root-balls “tip-up” and over time create a mound, while the root-ball’s excavation, a “pit.”

The stands are tall trees with massive crowns that make seeing their tops impossible. The crowns are worlds in themselves. Porcupines chew on upper branches and owls surely use any large cavities in these massive trees for homes. The dark shade cast by the crowns attract deer during winter to save energy from deep snow. I seek them in summer to escape the heat. A 400-year-old tree brings one back to pre-settlement of the Hudson Valley; Think about how much weather, seasons and history these trees have accumulated.

Hemlock a tree that thrives in the lack of disturbance, whether naturally or from humans. Perhaps this is one reason why hemlock was so much more common in the Catskill Mountains than in the Hudson Valley, since fewer humans wanted to live in upper elevations. In the absence of human burning or cutting, hemlock gained a competitive advantage over other trees and hence its abundance or ripeness for the bark peelers of the 19th century.

Signs of Ancient Fire

Next are those burnt-over forest types. These “burnt over” areas mostly grow on ridgetops near larger valleys where humans have been for millennia. Humans used to burn these ridges, probably the ones closest to larger valleys where they once lived. Since fire normally burns uphill, the tops might experience higher frequency of burns from all sides. Plants that tolerate fire the most are found on these rocky, ridgy, exposed sites. They include white oak, chestnut oak, scrub oak (bear oak), lowbush blueberry, pitch pine, wintergreen, mountain laurel, and American chestnut. This forest requires decades of blaze.

Another difference is size. While old hemlocks growing on good sites are giants, these trees barely attain 25 feet. Ridgetops are often drier and rockier, and trees don’t have the soil to support abundant tree height. While some dwarf pitch pine may date back to the 19th century and clock in at 6 feet tall, it’s not the height or age that stops me in my tracks. Instead, it shows me how forests might have looked in areas where humans were managing forests with fire to make them literally more “fruitful.”

These plants contain many fruit and nut-bearing trees and shrubs that were edible to humans and game species. This is a beautiful forest for its sheer diversity of plants, but also an extremely useful and practical one for hungry humans and the fauna that benefitted from it. I’d imagine that these forests were far more abundant in the more accessible parts of the northeastern mountains and lower valleys 600 years ago. I believe this for two main reasons. One: Native Americans had to eat something. The other is the testimony of early settlers to the abundance of American chestnut forests, which is one member of the “burnt over” club of plants.

These two stands or types couldn’t more dissimilar in their requirements to grow. One wants to be left alone, while the other needs disturbance. One represents “wilderness” or freedom from humans, while the other needs humans. Each is beautiful in its own way and we’re lucky to still have both in these Catskill Mountains. As for the Shawangunk Ridge? It is a unique pyrogenic forest. www.catskillforest.org