Electrical resistance to earth of a tree

LIVE TREES are frequently struck by lightning with varying degrees of injury, from bark wounds that may heal so well in a few years that unnoticeable scars are left — to splitting and shattering of the trunk or extreme blasting of the bark, that results in early death of the tree. It is well known in high-voltage laboratories that extremely dry wood is none too reliable for use in surge voltage demonstrations where, as a stunt, one wishes to split wood by means of a high-voltage surge discharge. It was thought that the electrical resistance characteristics of a live tree might play an important role relative to lightning damage. Because values of the electrical resistivity of green (live) wood were not found in a library, it seemed that it might be worthwhile to make measurements on trees adjacent to and similar to a tulip tree, about 100 feet tall, that had been almost mortally wounded by a lightning stroke.