Britain's tallest tree

BBC news item I found today about a 60metre tree being Britain's tallest found so far. The clip shows how tall trees are measured. Ignore the ad for the Philippines that may come on first. The man mentions some redwoods which are also contenders. Which means imported trees.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/7975434.stm

To our Australian ears 60 metres isn't bad as a tree, but remember some of the mountain ash (E. regnans) that seeded after Black Friday 1939 are already pushing 80 metres. The trees of that cohort that survived Black Saturday (Feb. 7th 2009) will make it well past that height. Redwoods have attained thier heights over a couple millenia in climates of 2500mm of rainfall a year. These mountain ash were seeded in the early to mid 20th century.

This statement of course gets us into the tallest tree competition that agitates many-myself inluded-and that brings me to Bob Beale's book "If Trees could Speak: stories of Australia's greatest trees" ISBN9781741142761. Beale mentions three 1926 generation ash trees he and Brett Mifsud measured at 85 metres. he also mentions an 1872 report by Inspector of State Forests William Ferguson, who measured a fallen tree that straddled a tributary of the Watts river from the roots to the extreme end at 435 feet, the tree was 18 feet in diameter at 5 feet and the end break was 3 feet in diameter. Ferguson estimated the original heith of the tree at 500 feet (152 m).