Kings River Sycamore

[zthomas]

Waded the Kings at Marshall Ford for a couple hours this afternoon (3/10) and ended up spending more time with the camera than the flyrod. Didn't realize until I downloaded them that most of my pictures had the same leaning sycamore in them, just from different perspectives.

[Al Agnew]

I think there was just a little discussion of so-called Indian trail trees in the Conservationist Magazine, which pretty much said what I've always thought. At this point in time, any true Indian trail tree would be at least 150-200 years old. Which would make it a pretty big tree. And chances are that any tree forced to grow in that configuration would not be all that healthy, and would probably not survive for 200 years. And...when you stop to think about it, why would Indians who lived in an area all their lives feel the need to put up "signposts", anyway? I suppose it's likely that such a thing was done now and then, but it's far, far more likely that these trees ended up in this configuration by "natural" means...another tree falls on a sapling, bending it down and holding it down, it then puts on more vertical growth, eventually the fallen tree rots away, leaving the now bigger "trail" tree in its new shape.

[Al Agnew]

Yeah, I agree, they make interesting subjects, and I've seen a few that looked like they were big enough and old enough to have been real trail trees, who knows. I wonder what people a few decades from now will think about the pine tree at Millstream Gardens that Elmer Tieman twisted into the corkscrew shape!

[Daryk Campbell Sr]

It just amazes me that a tree can get that large with all of the rock, and lack of soil around. Not to mention all of the floods it has had to endure. Maybe there is a scientific reason that sycamore trees can survive with those conditions.