1.6K views · 649 reactions | I went hiking to reset and found a patch...

How can you tell how old that white pine tree is — and how can that reveal some mysteries about a forest’s history? Reposting this video from 2024! Many of our conifers branch in “whorls” — producing growing a single section of trunk and a “ring” of branches each year. This growth strategy can provide us a neat way to tell their age — count the whorls and it will tell you about how old the pine tree is. While it becomes more difficult as the trees get larger, a lot of times you can see the old b