Interior Alaskan forests have only six native tree species: white spruce, black spruce, quaking aspen, balsam poplar, larch (tamarack) and paper birch. Northern Canadian forests have all of those, plus jack pine, balsam fir and lodgepole pine. Since northern Canada and interior Alaska share the same grueling climate and extremes of daylength, why are the Canadian tree species absent from ...
One of many Christmas pleasures is the aroma of a freshly cut tree. Both spruce and pine have it. So do cranberry fields in the morning, orange peelings, and some paint thinners.
Ben Gaglioti takes a core from a tree in the farthest-north grove of lodgepole pines in Alaska, near the town of Yakutat. Photo by Ned Rozell.
Newcomers to Alaska will frequently order young pine, fruit or maple trees from their home state in the lower 48. They enthusiastically proclaim that the trees should do well here because the temperatures in Montana, or Minnesota, or North Dakota, or wherever they're from frequently plummet as low as they do in Alaska.
After climbing a pine tree in the dark with a flashlight, he once found four kinglets huddled together on a branch beak-to-beak, looking like a ball of fluff. As much as I root for the Fairbanks kinglet to flap its way to a milder climate for winter, I realize the bird is maybe too bold a pioneer to pass on its genes.
The mummy trees of northern Ellesmere Island include a trunk of a pine tree four feet long and six inches in diameter. Each of the trees was at least 75 years old when it died. The ancient forest holds samples of the last real trees in the area before it became too cold and dry to support large plants, Barker said.