Station 27: Tree Roots

How many living root tips would you find in a teaspoon of this typical soil?

This surface is where trees "feed." In Massachusetts, tree roots do not go deep, especially where there is water or bedrock near the surface.

Roots of the same species may graft (fuse) together when they touch one another, but they can also strangle each other. Notice how one root passes over another and is raised in the air as the lower root thickens.

You are facing a wet swale, or depression, which is a favorable site for red maple. Many of the tree roots in the soil and along the surface, belong to red maple and also white pine. They occur at the surface here because the water table is high near the stream ahead of you and these soils are often saturated. Roots in saturated soils can "drown" from lack of oxygen.

Roots like these may extend 80 feet from the trunk of the tree. They do not branch very much. They are "pipes" for moving nutrients and water between the much smaller feeding roots and the stem of the tree.