A gal I'm talking to got so bored today she tried to measure a tree's age.
She cut down a tree because she was bored?
you don’t need to cut down a tree to get the data needed, just take a small chunk that reaches to the center of the tree, I think this is called coring it, the rest of the tree is still there. I will attempt an illustration at what I’m talking about because I suck at explaining things.
The image below is from a website and will be used at the base of the thing I’m talking about
Take the core of the tree, a small piece of it that reaches to the center of it and thus contains the xylem that is used for the layers
You will still be able to measure tree age, without cutting down the entire tree
Practiced this for a geology class. It will wear out your hands twisting the core drill in there, it's easy to miss the exact core, and your sample could get broken. But core drilling has no long term effects on the tree that natural predators like insect larvae or that damn bird pictured above wouldnt.
Reminds me, a couple years ago there was a wicked wind storm during February with like 50 mph linear gusts. Broke one of the decorative parking lot trees outside a feed and garden store in half. Not a big tree or anything, 6 inches in diameter, and it was deciduous. I was thinking, the tree was dormant, the break wasn't real nasty like bark stripped off, they had lots of necessary tools there... I would have just grafted it back together, it would probably lose a few branches but survive. They replaced it with a new sapling.
The easy solution, the safe solution, but testing no boundaries whatsoever. Lame.