Our Aspen Colony

We learned recently that our aspen stand has its dome shape because it is one large organism that has grown outward from the oldest trees in the center that through the ages have sent out roots from which new trees shoot up. The leaf canopy inside presumably prevents new upstarts by blocking the sun from the interior, while all around the outer edges, fingerlings shoot up at the first opportunity. And in two of the photos above you can see that they generally shoot up so closely to their siblings and cousins that they have to reach somewhat grotesquely away from the taller relative toward the sunlight.

This organism, then, is its root base, which has an age we cannot tell; the trees we enjoy, and occasionally heat our home with, are just the outward flourishes.

An aspen colony in Utah is said to be the largest and oldest living organism on Earth.

But I wonder what happens when the oldest trees in the middle die. These aspens don't live particularly long lives. They seem to reach their maturity and fall down when they reach a diameter of about twenty inches, or even less. I wonder if there's a dough-nut effect, whereby the demise of older trees in the middle opens the canopy enough to allow new shoots to replace them. From above, this phase of the succession of trees might resemble a giant tractor inner-tube. Time will tell.

This morning, Easter Sunday, was very cold, about twenty degrees, but down by the marsh a yellow-bellied sapsucker was excavating a nest hole in the side of an aspen about twenty feet up. This was a welcome sight, of course, but an even more welcome sound. I heard him before I saw him, and I knew I did not know its maker. We have a rich complement of woodpeckers here, and they're characteristically loud. The combined hammerings and calls of the little Downy, her bigger Hairy relative, the Red-bellied, the clownish Flicker, and the Pileated grand-daddy of them all make for quite a noisy river-bottom some days. So this morning when I heard the unfamiliar squawky "whaa," I went looking until I found him.

Now we'll keep an eye out for his mate and hope they'll let us follow their progress toward young'uns.