Month: December 2018

…human blood and tree sap each have 33 atoms to the molecule.  32 of those atoms are of the same type, trees to us, although in different ratios when comparing blood to sap.  In blood the author said that the 33rd atom is iron; in sap it is manganese.  That we and trees are that close.

Kenneth Bones
GLTPA Magazine, November 2018

• Brazil records worst annual deforestation for a decade (The Guardian)
• Lumber company’s gift of land opens more than 4 miles of undeveloped shoreline on Northwoods lake to public (Journal Sentinel)
• Half of Costa Rica’s Regrown Forests Are Gone Within Two Decades (Pacific Standard)
• How to Grow a Forest in the City (Medium)

From Atlas Obscura:

A remnant of the ancient subtropical rainforest that once covered this section of the North Auckland Peninsula, Tāne Mahuta is named with Maori mythology in mind. In Maori, Tāne is the son of the sky father, and Papatuanuku the earth mother. All of the living creatures in the forest are considered to be Tāne’s children.

From the New Zealand Department of Conservation:

Tāne Mahuta (‘Lord of the Forest’) is New Zealand’s largest known living kauri tree.  It is thought the first encounter of the tree by Westerners was in the 1920s, by contractors surveying the present SH12 through the forest. In 1928, Nicholas Yakas and other bushmen who were building the road, also came across the big tree Tāne Mahuta.

From The Guardian:

Now, the survival of what is believed to be New Zealand’s oldest living tree is threatened by kauri dieback, with kauri trees a mere 60m from Tāne Mahuta confirmed to be infected.

Kauri dieback causes most infected trees to die, and is threatening to completely wipe out New Zealand’s most treasured native tree species, prized for its beauty, strength and use in boats, carvings and buildings.

Despite stringent efforts by local iwi [Māori tribes] to combat the spread – most commonly through infected soil tramped in on walkers’ boots, or the hooves of wild pigs – there is no cure, and native tree experts are calling for international help to slow the spread of kauri dieback and save Tāne Mahuta.

From The New York Times:

Over the years, ecologists have called fire refugia by many names: fire shadows, unburned islands, skips, stringers. But only in the 1990s did the scientists start to pay serious attention to the ecological role that fire refugia play in forests and grasslands.

There are probably many factors at work. In the Northern Hemisphere, the north sides of mountains favor refugia. The plants there get less sunlight that their south-facing counterparts. They often hold more water in their trunks and roots, and they grow in moister soil that can tamp down fires.

From NASA Earth Observatory:

Along a swath of land curving through Mississippi and Alabama, farms dominate the landscape. The region is known as the Black Belt Prairie, so named for its characteristically dark, fertile soil. The contrast between this cultivated land and the surrounding forested areas is so stark that it is visible from space.

From the USFS:

Assessment of nontimber forest products in the United States under changing conditions. [PDF]

An estimated 20 to 25 percent of the United States population harvest NTFPs for personal use, and collection occurs on close to a quarter of family forest lands. The industry can be divided into five broad market segments: culinary products, medicinal and dietary supplements, decorative products, nursery stock and landscaping, and fine arts and crafts.

The annual value of U.S. maple syrup production is well over $100 million, distributed across 10 states. Vermont leads production whereas New York, Michigan, and Pennsylvania have the greatest potential to increase production. Overall, there is tremendous potential to increase maple syrup production as less than 1 percent of more than 2 billion tappable size maple trees are utilized.

From Futurity:

After counting a dead fish, researchers throw it on shore to remove the carcass and not double-count it the next day. The data collection is part of a long-term study looking at how bear predation affects sockeye salmon in this region.

Twenty years later, Quinn and colleagues discovered that all those fish did have a noticeable effect: White spruce trees on that side of the stream grew faster than their counterparts on the other side. What’s more, nitrogen derived from salmon was found in high concentration in the needles of those trees.

From Daily Overview:

From the podcast Science Solved It, S1E7:  The Ghost Trees (click to listen)

See also, from Motherboard: These Mysterious Pure White Redwood Trees Defy the Laws of Nature

Excerpted from Wikipedia:

Ogham is an Early Medieval alphabet used to write the early Irish language and later the Old Irish language There are roughly 400 surviving orthodox inscriptions on stone monuments throughout Ireland and western Britain.

In Early Irish literature a Bríatharogam is a two word kenning which explains the meanings of the names of the letters of the Ogham alphabet.

Later Medieval scholars believed that all of the letter names were those of trees, and attempted to explain the bríatharogaim in that light.

Graves proposed that the ogham alphabet encoded a set of beliefs originating in the Middle-East in Stone Age times, concerning the ceremonies surrounding the worship of the Moon-goddess in her various forms…Eventually, via the druids of Gaul, this knowledge was passed on to the poets of early Ireland and Wales. Graves therefore looked at the Tree Alphabet tradition surrounding ogham and explored the tree folklore of each of the letter names, proposing that the order of the letters formed an ancient “seasonal calendar of tree magic”.  Although his theories have been disregarded by modern scholars, they have been taken up with enthusiasm by the neopagan movement.

Let the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids provide your tree horoscope.