SearchResearch Challenge (2/14/24): Are tree rings nested cones or cylinders?

 While walking through a forest... 

P/C Sevenstorm (from Pexels.com)

... of very tall trees, I was wondering how old the trees were.  Luckily, just around the next bend in the trail there was the stump of a tree.  I counted the rings and found that it was around 25 years old.  But then I saw another cross section of the tree, but much narrower and taken from much higher up on the trunk, a bit like this: 

THAT started me thinking about markers of growth.  As you know, each ring is 1 annual growth cycle.  The dark bands are usually made of smaller cells that grow close together when times are tough, while the light bands are larger cells, created when living conditions are much better. 

But is the number of rings the same at the bottom of the tree as at the top?  That is... 

1. Are the rings in a tree trunk arranged as a cone or as a collection of cylinders?  In other words, if you count the rings at the top of the tree, would you see the same number of rings as at the bottom?  (If they're stacked cones, you'd expect the number to be different--if they're cylinders, you'd expect them to be the same.)  How ARE the tree rings organized inside of the tree trunk? 

2. If tree rings are the fingerprints of a tree, I know that cloned trees can have very different ring patterns, but what about humans?  Do identical twin humans have identical fingerprints, or not?  

Can you work your SRS magic on these Challenges and let us know?  

As always, tell us what you found, and how you found it.  (And yes, you can use LLMs or anything that floats your boat, including asking your fingerprint specialist detective uncle.)  Just be sure to include the details of what you did, including any tools or resources... be they AI or human.  

Keep Searching!