Month: March 2020

From Futility Closet:

The Cook pine, Araucaria columnaris, leans toward the equator. In 2017 botanist Matt Ritter of California Polytechnic State University noticed that pines growing in California and Hawaii leaned south; he called a colleague in Australia, who reported that the trees there leaned north.

In both hemispheres, the trees lean more sharply the farther they are from the equator. The average incline is 8 degrees, but one tree in South Australia leans 40 degrees.

From Texas Monthly:

Armed with Wohlleben’s wisdom, I make the argument that one of these creatures is evil: the cedar tree, which dominates the landscape of Central Texas. If, as Wohlleben writes, trees possess some degree of sentience, some spirit, some personhood that guides them in the way they act, then it is my opinion—arrived at without scientific acumen or research, but with the conviction of a sufferer—that cedar trees are villains.