“Such is the dichotomy of forests. Even the smallest remembers what it was to cover nations, and the shadows they contain will whisper the knowledge to anyone who listens.”
Seanan McGuire, Across the Green Grass Fields
Month: March 2021
Into the Forest
A New Tree
From National Geographic:
It’s not every day—or even every decade—that a new species of conifer is found in the world’s temperate forests. But late last year, researchers announced a new species of hemlock tree from Korea, proving that even our best-studied forests still hold surprises.
Read more here.
Walking Backwards (for trees)
From The Guardian:
A man from a village in East Java has embarked on an unconventional mission to raise awareness about preserving forests: he is walking 800km to Indonesia’s capital, backwards.
Medi Bastoni hopes that, after taking thousands of steps backwards – and hopefully forwards for mankind – he will have the opportunity to meet President Joko Widodo so he can ask him for a symbolic tree seed, which he intends to plant on the slopes of Mount Wilis.
Read more here.
Craft Maple Syrup
From The New York Times:
“Our industry is still very different from the Vermonts and the Maines because we’re still very much small family farms doing it,” she told us.
“I like to compare us to the craft breweries; Vermont and Maine are more of a commercial product. New York adds the ingredient of love to their maple syrup.”
Read more here.
The Quietest Place in America
From Gizmodo:
After years of painstaking acoustic measurements, Hempton identified this spot on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula as the quietest place in the U.S.—the spot most free of our man-made noise pollution. He has nurtured this square inch, guided people to it, and protected it from encroaching cacophony of our modern world. But now it faces its biggest threat yet.
Read more here.
Woodswimmer
From This is Colossal:
WoodSwimmer is a new short film by engineer and stop-motion animator Brett Foxwell…the work follows a piece of raw wood through a milling machine, capturing its unique growth rings, knots, and weathered spots through a series of cross-sectional photographic scans. Due the speed at which the images are animated, the log’s grains begin to flow like granules of sand—shifting, mixing, and flowing in a vibrant dance that seems completely removed from its rigid material.
Underwater Logging
From Mother Earth News:
The old-growth trees of those far-reaching Northeast lands are forever gone—or are they? Several years ago, Scott Mitchen, cofounder along with Robert “Buz” Holland of the Superior Water-Logged Lumber Co., Inc. in Ashland, Wisconsin, discovered that hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of sunken logs lie preserved on the bed of Lake Superior, remnants of logging operations that stretch back over 300 years. Transported in chain-boomed rafts to sawmills, 20% to 30% of the timber became water-logged and fell to the lake bed, where it is destined to remain. That is, until treasure hunter and shipwreck salvager Scott Mitchen and his team of divers get hold of it. “This,” says Mitchen, “is the biggest treasure we’ve ever found.”
Read more here.
The American Woods
From Public Domain Review:
The American Woods, a collection of more than 1000 paper-thin wood samples representing more than 350 varieties of North American tree. Between 1888 and 1913, Hough published a total of thirteen volumes of the work, but died in 1923 before being able to fulfil his epic fifteen volume plan. However, a final fourteenth volume was published in 1928 using his samples and field notes compiled by his daughter.
Read more here.
Lime Tree Leaf II
From Nikon Small World:
Lime tree leaf vessels architectonics
Dr. Josef Spacek
Image of Distinction
2007 Photomicrography Competition