On 01/06/2016 2:06 PM, Leon wrote:
On 1/6/2016 12:57 AM, OFWW wrote:
....

Anyhow, here are a few page links, and basically the growth, or rainy
season and the end of it determines the rings. So in areas that have
a regular rainy season you will get a growth ring. In a severe drought
it can be difficult to tell if there is a growth ring or not. I have
included the areas of tropical forests to show that there can be
multiple growth rings per year, and that basically a tree is a tree is
a tree.
....
Bottom line? Tree's don't have birthday's.

And yet they are called "Annual" Growth rings. That still sounds like a
new ring each year.

As noted earlier, that's fine for temperate-zone regions but "not so
much" in tropical areas. US FPL points out that that is poor terminology...

And from your link,

Each year, the tree forms new cells, arranged in concentric circles
called annual rings or annual growth rings. These annual rings show the
amount of wood produced during one growing season.

And, from just a little farther down in the same link--

"Trees in Tropical Countries

Annual rings generally exist in trees where the climate halts growth at
some point during the year. In our country, winter causes this shutdown.
In other countries, it is the dry season. Growth begins again in the
spring or rainy season.

But what happens to trees growing in countries where there is no
alternation between growth and rest periods?

For example, a country where it rains all year long! Remember that all
trees grow by adding successive rings. So in such an area, the beginning
and end of the growth period may occur any time during the year,
depending on the local conditions.

Some trees in tropical forests, like the okoumé (Gaboon), manage to
create several dozen very thin rings in a year, and never the same
number from one year to the next. It is often difficult, even
impossible, to distinguish them with the naked eye. In such cases, it is
extremely hard to determine the age of the tree."

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