650-year-old NM tree succumbs to drought

Yoda, a 7-foot-tall Douglas fir on the lava flows south of Grants, died this summer at the age of 650 or so. An icon for scientists studying the history of New Mexico's climate, Yoda survived many a drought. But the tree couldn't get through the latest one, said University of Tennessee professor Henri Grissino-Mayer. Yoda was alive in March, according to Grant Harley of the University of Mississippi, one of a posse of researchers who have been tracking the tree. But when Harley brought a group of students to the remote site in August, the tree was dead. Grissino-Mayer was a graduate student in 1991 when he and a colleague found Yoda among a stand of Douglas fir trees growing out of a lava flow at El Malpais National Monument south of Grants. Douglas firs can grow 150 feet tall or more. Yoda was maybe 7 feet tall. But when Grissino-Mayer carefully removed a pencil-thin core of wood (this doesn't harm the trees) to count Yoda's annual growth rings, he found that the tree had been alive since at least 1406. Gnarled, with a head of dead branches and a few live ones springing from his crown, Yoda looked every bit the wise elder. "Size," as the tree's Star Wars namesake said, "matters not."...more