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EXAMINING CONIFER TRUNKS The "trunk" of a tree is really a stem, but it is the main stem of a tree, and it holds up the tree. Here we have a Christmas tree (or a log cut from a trunk, which has not been split), and we're going to look at the end of it to see what we can learn. As trees get older, their trunks get fatter at the same time they get taller. See the circles (called "rings") on the end of the trunk? They tell us some things about the tree's growth. In some kinds of trees, you can tell how old the tree is by counting the rings. This tree is a fir tree, a kind of "conifer" (pronounced "con-if-fur"), which means it bears cones to hold its seeds. Conifers have rings that are easy to see. Each ring shows one season of growth. Some rings are wider than others. During the year that the wider rings were grown, the growing season was a little longer than the year the narrow rings grew. When the narrow rings grew, the winter was very cold and the next summer was very dry. That makes a short growing season. Conifers grow very slowly while the weather is cold, and faster when it is warm. You can tell this by the different colors inside each ring. Do you see that one side of the trunk has wider rings than the other side? That means that the tree grew on a hillside. The side of wider rings grew on the downhill slope, and the side of narrow rings was on the uphill slope.  Any problems with this page? Send URL to
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