by Crusoe on Fri Oct 21, 2005 1:51 pm
Tank, BI 63, Bonnie, RRD2 (did I leave out anyone ?),
This is truly a superior discussion of the trees of Oak Island, not that earlier discussions have not been worthwhile.
From memory, and without trying to ransack the Forum for earlier contributions, I've learned that the spindly shape of the Oak Island trees can be attributed to growing conditions, so that trees of different species sown and grown under similar conditions can look similar.
My Long Island friend who is expert on trees also mentioned "pioneer trees." I'm not certain what the phrase denotes, but apparently they tend to grow up to look like the trees we are discussing. Tall and spindly, and yes, you can't tell their age by their trunk diameters. You need to count the rings.
The trees which look most like the Oak Island 'oaks' are the 'beeches' of North Berwick, Scotland, but in all probability, they are different species.
THe official web-site for the historic trees of Scotland showed several famous old oaks. They were all substantial in trunk and bough, as I recall. The Act of Union trees of North Berwick, also in an occasionally windswept seaside environment, resembled the Oak Island oaks exactly, as has been observed.
Although we've had no firm evidence, I think we're all interested in the posibility that the oaks were intentionally sown on the island. The idea of the earliest mariners with an interest in the island intentionally 'marking' it with distinctive oaks has a great deal of romantic appeal, and may be quite true. Maybe we will know for sure one day. Another possibility is that imported mast in the form of acorns were transported to the island to feed the domestic animals pastured there. Less romantic, but maybe more likely.
Meantime, the excellent photos which has already provided may be of interest to my tree expert friend in New York, as well as to the expert on the historic trees of Scotland site who responded graciously to my earlier inquiry. I'll see what I can do.
---Crusoe
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BTW for especially: A senior programmer at Apple of my acquaintence has been working for months on a top-secret project. On Wednesday, October 19 at 1:10 pm, the company issued the following press release about a new product for professional photographers. The secret is called Aperture.
Just in case, anyone is interested:
"Apple introduces Aperture for pro photographers Wednesday, October 19, 2005 @ 1:10pm
Apple today introduced Aperture, to be available through the Apple Store, the first all-in-one post production tool designed to provide everything photographers need after the shoot. Aperture features powerful compare and select tools, nondestructive image processing, color managed printing and custom web and book publishing. "Aperture is to professional photography what Final Cut Pro is to filmmaking," said Rob Schoeben, Apple's vice president of Applications Marketing. Compare and select tools in Aperture allow photographers to easily sift through massive photo projects and quickly identify final selections, and the application automatically groups sequences of photos into easy-to-manage stacks based on the time interval between exposures. Aperture will be available in November for $500 (system requirements were unavailable).
Aperture allows photographers to navigate through entire projects in a full-screen workspace that can be extended to span multiple displays, tiling multiple images side-by-side for a faster, easier compare and select.
The Loupe magnifying tool examines portions of images in detail without the need to zoom and pan across large files. A virtual Light Table builds simple photo layouts, rearranging, resizing, and piling them together in a free-form space. RAW images are maintained natively throughout Aperture without any intermediate conversion process, and can be retouched using a suite of adjustment tools designed specifically for photographers. Aperture's nondestructive image processing engine never alters a single pixel of original photos, giving photographers the power and flexibility to modify or delete changes at any point in the workflow. Aperture can create multiple versions of a single image without duplicating files, allowing experimentation without risk of overwriting the master image or using up large amounts of hard drive space. Aperture images can also be launched directly into Adobe Photoshop for compositing and layer effects. Aperture features a complete color-managed pipeline with support for device specific ColorSync profiles and a set of high-quality output tools for showcasing work. Print options include customizable contact sheets, high-quality local printing, and color-managed online prints."
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