Acivities

Special Pages > Trees in the Seasons

Activities that you can do with trees

How tall is that tree?

Fold a square piece of paper in half so that it forms the triangle. Hold the triangle in front of one eye by holding a corner opposite to the 90° right angle and point the rest of the triangle towards you, one of the short sides should be horizontal

and the other should be vertical pointing straight up. You should be able to look up along the longest side by raising your eyes ,move back from the tree until you can just see the top of the tree at the tip of the triangle. Close one eye and use the other to look directly along the longest side of the triangle until you see the exact top of the tree, mark the spot where you are standing then measure the distance from the spot to the base of the tree, this distance is almost the full height of the tree. You need to add your own height to this since you're looking at the tree from a height of your eyes; now you have the full answer

How old is that tree?

Measure up the trunk to about 5 ft ( 1.6m) then measure the circumference or girth of the tree at this point. If working in Imperial each inch of girth represents approximately 1ft height e.g. a tree with a 20inch girth will be approximately 20 years old. If using metric units and the girth is in cms. this will need to be divided by 2.5 , hence a tree with a 60cm girth would be about 24years old. There are a few sections of trunk from trees that have been cut down which have been left and you can count the number of rings.