Geo 1095: January 16, Day 746: Another Negative Stump

This tree cast needs scale, but it's too high, maybe 10 or 12 feet above the path, to get at. I'd guess it's in the range of 1-2 feet in its long dimension. As I said in the previous "negative stumps" post, these casts are smaller and less densely distributed than the modern forests in the immediate vicinity, but remind me more of the oak-savannah copses on the modern Willamette Valley floor. (Silver Falls is well up into the Cascade Foothills, and gets significantly more precipitation than lower down.) Unfortunately, unless one was to find some preserved charcoal, there's no way to determine what taxon of tree this represents, at least that I know of. On the other hand, given even a small bit of charcoal, I could easily determine in a glance whether it was a softwood or a hardwood, and the genus Quercus (oaks) is fairly easy to recognize from its wood grain- though taking it to the species level is tricky for experts and impossible for me.

Photo unmodified. August 30, 2012. FlashEarth Location (approximate).