Harvested in 2005, Finished and Mounted in 2016

Tree Cookie Courtesy of Adam M. Conway

Display Courtesy of Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Forestry

This tree cookie is a cross section of a white oak tree trunk from Licking County. It was cut 12 feet up from the base of a tree in February of 2005. An ice storm had blanketed central Ohio two weeks prior, and the weight of the ice had broken the top of the tree. This tree was harvested to recover its value, and wood from this tree inspired the use of white oak wood in the renovation of the Thompson Library.
Tree cookies tell a lot about the history of a tree because they reveal a tree’s growth rings. Because trees grow larger in circumference by adding wood in the cambium (directly underneath the bark), tree rings radiate out from the center of the cookie. A “ring” is created through the addition of more, larger cells during a peak growing period in spring, followed by the addition of fewer, smaller cells during the summer. Wood grown in spring is light in color, while wood grown during the summer is darker. Together, the spring wood and summer wood form a tree ring.
Because each ring represents one year of growth, a tree age’s can be determined by counting the rings. In total, this tree cookie shows 324 rings, so it was seeded in 1680–1681.