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circa every 20 years this happens, and then they start all over again

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franksolich:
http://sandhillsexpress.com/local-news/nebraska-national-forest-near-halsey-continues-to-burn-thursday/

This is where I spent my adolescence.

About the turn of the last century, a botanist from New York decided Nebraska needed trees, and so this forest was planted in the Sandhills.  It is (was) the largest man-made forest in the world.

The terrain, the soil, the amount of rain, the weather, are inhospitable to trees; they shouldn't be there, and nature shoves them out.

Going back as far as I can remember, 1965, about every twenty years there's a big fire that levels the forest, after which new shoots are planted in between the charred branchless trunks.

This notion that Nebraska "needs" trees is nonsense; Nebraska has plenty of trees, alongside rivers.  As Nebraska has more miles of river than the other 47 of the 48 lower states--surpassing even Texas, Montana, California, and somesuch--that means we have lots and lots of trees.

Eupher:
When we lived in Utah (2000-2004), one of the things that always struck me was the presence of cottonwood trees along the banks of the rivers and creeks in our neighborhood.

Ash, beech, and other hardwoods were in the area, but those cottonwoods elicited a warm 'n fuzzy that I can't explain. Maybe it has something to do with the cotton those trees excreted. It never got old.

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