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[Above photo courtesy of The Seeded Earth. Brrr for now. But spring is coming to the north.]
I grew up in Missouri and was outside most of the time. I was able to enjoy those fearless years when it was nothing to climb to the top of a 40-foot-high tree, and to sway back and forth with one foot wedged into the crook of a skinny branch.
So writes Jennifer at Thursday Drive, just in time to put me in the mood for this month’s Festival of the Trees. She’s my sister, you see, and many moons ago we used to climb the oak tree in our backyard, just as high as the ever-thinning branches would let us. Never quite high enough to peek out of the top, but almost. We left our mark on that tree, and we left behind a few dreams.
The Stanford News Service reports on a new computer program, appropriately called Dryad, that helps users create virtual trees, a heretofore difficult task.
The Steampunk Treehouse (or Steamdork Treehouse, if you prefer) brought a bit of whimsy as well as a dose of seriousness to last year’s Burning Man. Dave Shulman, part of the team that created the treehouse, said this:
One of the story lines that we used to talk about in trying to evoke what the sense of the tree is: Imagine a time far in the future when climate change and human impact on the planet has killed off all the trees and there aren’t any more. And this might have been what a tree would like if it were built by people that had never seen one and that are just trying to remember what was a tree.
Best of all, it’s for sale.
The future isn’t here just yet. Jennifer Forman Orth at Invasive Species Weblog writes of a resurgence of gray mangroves in Mission Bay, California, as well as an invasion of tree-of-heaven that is threatening one of the last remaining populations of running buffalo clover.
The news isn’t all bad. The Telegraph reports:
A new species of palm tree which flowers spectacularly once in its long life and then dies has been discovered in Madagascar.
The tree has a strange lifecycle when after growing for as long as 50 years and to an immense height, the stem tip develops a giant inflorescence and bursts into branches of hundreds of tiny flowers. Each flower is capable of being pollinated and developing into fruit and drips with nectar attracting swarms of insects and birds. But the effort of the colourful display and the production of fruit is so taxing that the nutrient reserves of the palm run dry as soon as it fruits and the entire tree collapses and dies. The tree was found by accident by Xavier Metz, a Frenchman who manages a cashew plantation in Madagascar. He and his family were walking in a remote area in the north-west of the island when they stumbled across the giant palm and the huge pyramidal bunch of flowers sprouting out of the tip.
Let us pause and contemplate this photo from Ladybug’s Leaf (click for a larger version):
For further meditation, visit C’mon Let’s Plant a Tree, where Vinayaraj combines his original photography with poetry.
Dan’s post on the Little Kurrajong tree will take you both to Australia and Spain.
Swirled trees, quaking trees, battered trees, lonely trees, and (best of all) ginkgo trees await you at Christian Naturalist, Walking Prescott, Roundrock Journal, Wrenaissance Reflections, and Alone on a Limb.
Dave Coulter sent in these two photos, the first of a burl on an osage orange tree, and the second taken during a guerrilla planting project for oak acorns. I’ll leave you to ponder the implications of the phrase “guerrilla planting project.” (Or let me pick up some of the slack: What does one wear? Does one work in teams? Are weapons involved? Is there a leader? If one gets caught, what will people say? Just for starters.)
Trees and ants are on Jade’s mind over at Arboreality. Watch the dance.
Trees can listen, if they have ears.
Which is a looooong way of saying, sadly, that another Festival of the Trees has drawn to a close. Next month, Festival of the Trees will be hosted by Peg at Orchards Forever. Send your entries to her at amberapple (at) gmail (dot) com or use the automated submission form. Peg would love to see entries related to orchards and fruit trees, but other kinds of entries are also welcome.