I was curious given this week’s extremely low temperatures, and how yearly, trees seem to avoid death of their cells and structures in what would be otherwise destructive temperatures. How do they do this?
In: Biology
Depends on what you call “freezing” I lived in Northern Wisconsin, and around 1976 or 7, at my girlfriend’s parents house, their back yard thermometer said 52 below zero, the local TV said 48 below zero, but lower in the low lying areas. My car would not start, i had to stay the night, later that night, we would hear these very loud Caaaararrrrcccks! out in the woods, all around the house, next morning, just walking out the front door, i saw the first evidence of what the loud crack noises were, as I looked over at a poplar tree, similar to an Aspen tree, they could get pretty big, this tree had a huge split, a crack, running from the ground up to the branches, and as i scanned the woods, i saw many poplar trees with big splits running up one side, my girlfriend’s father came out with the dog, I showed him the cracks in all the trees, he said, “i’ve heard of that from many years ago”, it can sometimes get so cold that the fluid, and sap, in the trees freezes solid, just like an ice cube, the damp, then frozen solid wood expands and then violently splits the wood and bark in one quick crack running up the side of the tree. In the spring, they cut down as many of the trees by the house as they could, stacked them up for year’s worth of firewood, because the soft poplar wood rots quickly and they didn’t want the dying trees to fall on their house.
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