Before going to sleep, I sometimes read a boring book in order to get me to yawn. So not too long ago, while in a bookstore, I saw a book entitled How To Read a Tree and I thought it would be perfect. After all, trees grow pretty slowly, so there was unlikely to be much action or tension in this book, I thought.
It didn’t work out. I found the book by Tristan Gooley fascinating. Not a snoozer at all. It turns out there are all sorts of interesting patterns I’d overlooked that I began to notice once I became more mindful of trees.
Here is the same location in summer. It doesn’t look weird at all. To the left of the pine is a tree that is full of leaves, and the asymmetry of the pine isn’t evident:
So what is going on?
Sometimes, an asymmetric appearance of a tree can be due to prevailing winds. I don’t think that’s what’s going on here. Among the things I learned from Gooley’s book is that pines, more than other trees, grow branches and needles where light is available and shed branches that fall into shade. An isolated pine may look symmetric and surrounded with needles as in the Pine Tree Flag of the American Revolution. But a pine in a grove of trees will look different, often like a tall pole with needles just at the very top:
Inspired by How to Read a Tree, I recently took a walk in the woods and made a special effort to be mindful of the trees. The nature reserve I walked in had a lot of brush along the ground but when I passed this tree, I noticed that the ground in front of it was bare. It reminded me of something from the book—that some trees manufacture a kind of toxin that keeps competitors from growing near them. I wondered if this tree was one of them. Using a free phone app that identifies plants, I determined that the tree in question was a black walnut. When I later checked the book, sure enough, the black walnut is one of those trees that releases out a herbicide to kill nearby competitors”
I walked further into the forest and noticed a tree that drew my attention simply because the trunk split low to the ground. But on examining the red maple further, something else was evident—something that didn’t belong there. If you examine the picture closely, I’m sure you’ll notice it:
So take a walk through a forest or even down your street. Spend time noticing the trees. You may come across something striking that you otherwise would have passed by.
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