Count the rings to know the age of a tree  

All living beings age with time. If you were to be asked your age, you would be quick to respond with the number of years you have celebrated your birthdays. But what about trees? How do you know a tree is young or old or how do you tell its exact age?  

Well, scientists have a way to tell. They have been studying trees for hundreds of years. They can tell the age of a tree, the climate, floods, insect damage and even if there was a forest fire in the recent years.  

According to them, one of the most accurate ways to determine a tree’s age is by counting its rings. The science of determining the age of a tree by counting rings is called Dendrochronology.  

The math  
Now, how do you calculate the age of a tree? It’s not that difficult. In fact, you can even do it all by yourself. All you have to do is find a stump of a tree that was cut down or get a circular piece of a tree from near its bottom. Make sure the tree was cut horizontally so the stump or cross-section is relatively flat.  

Once you have a piece of its trunk, look for alternating dark-coloured rings and light-coloured rings.  Remember, the light rings typically form in spring and early summer, while the dark rings form in late summer and fall.  

Count the number of dark rings to calculate the age of the tree. Start in the middle of the stump or cross-section of wood and count the first dark ring you see. Now, continue counting outwards from the middle ring until you reach the last dark ring. The total number of dark rings represents the age of the tree in years. Simple! 

Also, don’t count the bark of the tree as a dark ring. It doesn’t represent a year of growth because the bark just continues to get pushed out as the tree grows from the inside.  

What else can you find apart from age? 
From this piece of trunk, you can discover what the climate was like and what happened in the area.  

For example, spot narrowly-spaced rings to find out the dry years. A narrow ring on a tree’s trunk represents a year when there was not a lot of rain. Clusters of narrow rings indicate several years of drought. In some cases, narrow rings can represent an insect infestation. On the other hand, the widely-spaced rings tell us that it was a good growing season with plenty of rainfall.  

If you find any black scars within the tree’s rings surrounded by normal wood, they represent the years during which a forest fire or something similar struck the tree.