hyperaccumulators

Thanks to Super Punch, we learn that there is a class of highly-specialised trees that have evolved a particular affinity for normally toxic metals.
As the appropriately named Doctor Antony van der Ent explains to the BBC’s science desk, a species that they are studying in New Caledonia has high concentrations of nickel in its sap (latex) that researchers speculate may be a defence against insect predation. Under threat from deforestation from strip mining activities and slash and burn farming, scientists hope to study how the mechanism, called hyperaccumulation, works and perhaps to harness it to purify soils contaminated by industry or waste or even passively mine the ground for metals, harvesting the accrued resources with the plant—an extraction strategy called phytomining.

out to pasture

Via Kottke, we’re directed toward a rather powerful and immediate way to visualise land-use in the United States of America by projecting percentages on to a map of the contiguous states. Each pixel represents one million acres (about four hundred thousand hectares) and an enormous amount is allotted to ranches, ranges and pasturelands for livestock and for raising feed for the animals with crops for human consumption dwarfed in comparison. One would think that in this day and age, one could find a better use for more than a third of one’s territory than the upkeep of cattle and wonder how other countries and regions rank.

father of many seeds

Unlike the Little Prince who considered them an existential threat to his tiny planet, we’ve been cultivators of baobabs for quite some time and have many clones around the house grown from errant leaves and branches and it was quite distressing and depressing to learn that after millennia of existence, we’re living through a time (with our much more modest lifespans) when many of Africa’s monumental trees have succumbed to the ill affects of manmade climate change. The title is the etymological root for the plant, borrowing from the Arabic name abū ḥibāb (أبو حباب). Hopefully it’s not too late for those majestic and sheltering landmarks that remain.

sperrzone oder deutsche-deutsche grenze

We owe the expanse of forest in part at least to being on the former border that separated East and West Germany (previously here, here and assuredly elsewhere) and the Grünes Band Deutschland (the German Green Belt) conserved by environmental organisations to form a natural reserve linked along the former Iron Curtain, forming a quite exceptional no man’s land of undisturbed species and habitats.
Today all that remains is a trail marker and a slight gradient change. On the Thüringen side, there’s carriage way for patrol vehicles that runs parallel to the corridor and a small memorial to two casualties of the intervening minefield during an escape attempt in 1965.
The first stages of the partition of Germany from 1945 to 1952 was also referred to as the “Green Border” before fortifications were established and movement strictly controlled but authorities on both sides soon realised that they needed to increase security measures in order to stem the flow of economic refugees in the eyes of the West and “spies, diversionists, terrorists and smugglers” according to the East.

yes, I am the lorax who speaks for the trees, which you seem to be chopping as fast as you please

Via Kottke’s Quick Links, we are introduced to a Berlin-based internet search engine called Ecosia whose simple and transparent business model based on advertisement revenue (if they’re going to profile you, invade your brain and vie for your attention anyway, then let it be at least for a good cause) has so far managed to underwrite the planting of approaching twenty four million trees—with a goal of a billion more trees by 2020.
We’ve grown keenly aware  of the contribution of forests to ecological balance, biodiversity and climate stabilization but we’ve got a long way to go to make up for our thoughtless past behavior. Join the team at Ecosia on their journey to achieve this good turn for the planet.

skógræktin

The always brilliant Nag on the Lake shares a short but rather remarkable video on the efforts to reforest Iceland and return it to the state it was, some twenty to forty percent woodland coverage, before the arrival of the Vikings and the clearing to make room for agriculture and grazing lands. Lack of trees contribute to extreme weather in the country as well as diminishing returns on farming and pastures as soils erodes, threatening to turn the island into a desert. Learn more at the links above.

shinrin-yoku

We really appreciated this formal introduction to one of our favourite pasttimes from the New Yorker on the Japanese therapeutic practise of forest bathing (森林浴) and learning of all the collateral benefits through the soft-focus portfolio of Tokyo-based photographer Yoshinori Mizutani. Both scientists and physicians recognise its spectrum of benefits in curbing stress and anxiety and boosting overall well-being. Learn more about shinrin-yoku at the link above and get inspired to carve space out in your day to commune with the trees in your local greenspace.

daytrip: hochrhön

We had the chance to do a bit of local exploring near our home and we found the ruin (die Mauerschädel as it’s singularly known) of a fortified church built around the year 1000 and abandoned about three centuries later during the height of the plague (Pest) in the fields behind the village of Filke, the inter-German border separating Bavaria from East Germany once passing through the nave of the structure.
In the 1970s, the whole of the structure was ceded to Bavaria for security purposes. Though the outbreak of the plague is considered the likely culprit for its eventual abandonment, another anachronistic suggestion is that once bulwarks of the region, Filke and other surrounding settlements that essentially became ghost-towns before being eventually repopulated sacrificed themselves to the marauding tribes of the Huns, able to Christianise the scouting parties only to be later betrayed and massacred. A maiden in white is said to haunt the grounds, but that is a relatively recent embellishment.
Afterward, we took another detour to see some marshland in a nature reserve (the whole region is a nature reserve, really, but there are also specially designated areas that are protected from traffic and development) but the trails didn’t really get very near and the scrub separating it from the path was intimidating. H and I did however get the chance to explore the deep woodlands and encountered some deer that bounded past us before we could react.
More our pace, however, we found an assortment of mushrooms and toadstools that we resolved to learn about and come back to the clearing where they seemed to thrive.
The forest directly behind our house are baronial lands, still in the same family, and we wouldn’t want to be accused of poaching.

xylotheque

The intrepid explorers of Amusing Planet introduce us to a very special sort of “book” depository curated in locations across Europe and beyond that began with the advent of modern forestry in the eighteenth century.
Botanists began forming libraries whose stacks contained wooden books that were compartments that held the twigs, fruit, root and bark samples of different sorts of trees—ξύλον being Greek for wood and θήκη a library. The word book in English itself is a cognate of the Germanic word for the beech tree, with early writing carved on blocks of wood. The pictured shelf is part of the Schildback Xylotheque located in the city of Kassel and there’s much more to be found at the link up top.

june bride oder baumbastik

Amusing Planet has a nice profile and appreciation of the Bridegroom’s Oak (die Bräutigamseiche) of the Dodauer Forest of Eutin—north of Lübeck, a tree with its own postal code (Postleitzahl) and recipient of human correspondence and secret-keeper.
While the tree’s origins might be conflated with myth and the message of missionaries, the tradition of letter-writing can be traced back to historical star-crossed lovers. A forester’s daughter and the son of a Leipziger chocolatier used the oak as a letter-drop cite for their liaisons—to their parents’ initial disapproval. Later the parents relented and the pair was wed under the trees boughs in June 1891. Their fame spread by word of mouth and people began writing to the tree in hopes of finding true love. Letters deposited in the tree’s trunk are open to public-inspection and several matches have been made over the years. The Bridegroom’s Oak was itself married to the Holy Ghost horse chestnut (die Himmelgeister Kastanie) in April of 2009—across Germany in the Ruhrgebiet near Düsseldorf. The two seem to be handling their long-distance relationship quite well.

inholding

Satellite views of some rural areas of US northwest reveal forested lands that have distinctive chequerboard patterns—almost like the transparent colour tool in digital imagery, whose origins reach back to the mid nineteenth century when federal lands were parcelled to corporations and individuals in such an alternating fashion, beginning with railroad land grants along transportation corridors.
The public retained the spaces in between—these are square mile lots—as wooded refuges buffeted by grazing land managed by homesteaders, and hoped to benefit economically as improved infrastructure increased the value of federal holdings. The government planned to sell the remaining parcels at a profit but this real estate bubble failed to foment as most people motivated to resettle and go West weren’t people of means to begin with and could not afford plots adjacent to the railways and most went unsold or were given away wholesale.

arboretum

Amusing Planet has a touching and gentle appreciation of Survivor Trees from all corners of the globe that bore witness all sort of human catastrophe and crime, but withstood the wreckage brought to its boughs and remained standing as a memorial. One of the more poignant profiles is that of the Miracle Pine that somehow made it through the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan in 2011 when everything else was washed away. This lone sentinel sadly too succumbed to the aftermath of the massive flood, poisoned slowly over the following months by salt water. An artificial tribute was put in its place and a high lookout tower surrounds it.