Category Archives: Personal stories
A perfect day among urban trees
Posted by Dave Bonta
Have you ever seen a photo of a newborn mammal? The way the light shines through the pink flesh, through the transparent eyelids and through the doughy snouts, a field of stars shining through every new finger and toe?
It shines through the new leaves in the same way.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the leaves…
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Posted in Exploring, Personal stories, Philosophy, Photography, Poetry, Species portraits, Urban trees, Videos
Tags: castor-aralia, China fir, dawn redwood, horse chestnut, pawpaw, Philadelphia, United States, Zen
On the thorns of a dilemma
Posted by rr
The question is – are they long? or long enough? or longer than the other ones? And are the leaves first? or the blossom? Lucy Corrander at Loose and Leafy explains how it’s not always easy to tell the haw- from the black- when it comes to thorns.
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Posted in Personal stories, Photography, Species portraits
February shelf fungi
Posted by Dave Bonta
For those of us in northern climes, winter can be a good time to look at moss, lichen, and the woodier shelf fungi. British blogger Lucy Corrander finds and photographs February fungi on old, felled and fallen wood of yew and sycamore. (If you know your U.K. polypores, stop by and help her out with the i.d.s.)
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Posted in Biodiversity, Exploring, Fungi and lichens, Personal stories, Photography
How do you unfollow a tree?
Posted by Dave Bonta
Just because she’s started following a new tree this year, Lucy at Loose and Leafy has found that she can’t abandon last year’s sycamore. She shares some new photos of the tree and its forb companions, and concludes the post with a list of links to other tree-followers. (Add your blog to the list by finding a tree of your own to follow this year.)
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How to study trees right
Posted by Dave Bonta
Without necessarily casting any aspersions on forestry schools and the way they inculcate knowledge of trees and forests, I’d like to suggest that the way Rebecca has been doing it, as shared at her blog A Year With the Trees for the past two years, might be the best way to really understand our arborescent neighbors.
The 93 trees of “A Year With the Trees” have become a big part of my life. For the past two years, I sought each one of these trees, found them and sat with them. I have looked into their branches, looked closely at the veins in the leaves, at the branching, at the bark, at the land each of these trees lives in, and at the birds that live in the branches. I watched the bared branches of winter sprout new green growth in the spring. I watched the fullness of summer life that lives in the trees, and watched how summer turned into fall with the changing color. I watched as the gold, brown, red and yellow leaves fell to the ground. I have seen the branches laid bare once again awaiting new growth in the spring.
What’s next in 2012 for Rebecca’s apparently unending “year”? Click through to find out.
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Giant banyan roots
Posted by Dave Bonta
An Indian-American journalist searching for her roots on the banks of the Ganges had little to go on but a couple of clues: the family name, and someone’s recollection of a giant tree in the courtyard of the correct temple. Stop by Sacred Cows for a fascinating story.
