Bio-Diversity
Illustrator Christoph Niemann looks at the identification of leaves in a whole new way. See a collection of leaves from trees you never knew existed, like the Fast Forwood and the Alder Ego. Link -via Swiss Miss
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A "Holzbibliothek" is a "wooden library." A library of wooden books. Literally.
In the late 18th century, Carl Schildbach was manager of a German estate famous for its ornamental park. He had no formal academic or scientific training, but at the request of his employer began compiling a reference collection of the natural history of each type of tree and shrub in the estate, eventually totalling 546 items…
“The format… was that of a box or casket, the raw materials for which were provided by the specimen itself, made up in the form of a book – varying in size from folio to duodecimo – with the ‘front cover’ forming a sliding lid…
For the left side of the ‘volume’ mature wood was selected and for the right side sapwood, while the fore-edge was made from heartwood; the top surface incorporated cross-sections from branches of various ages while the bottom surface showed a section through the trunk…
While the box itself served to illustrate the characteristics of the timber, the interior was reserved for an exposition of the whole natural history of the plant… a complete seedling is included to one side, with its roots, seminal capsule and first pair of leaves. In the centre of the box the tip of a branch displays buds and leaves in various stages of development…blossoms are shown varying from full blooms to faded flowers, while fruits are similarly represented at every stage in their development… Examples of associated parasites and lichens are included…”
The empress Catherine tried to purchase Schildbach’s collection, but he deeded it to his master, Landgrave Wilhelm IX; it now resides in the Naturalienkabinett in Kassel, where it is still used as reference material. Schildbach inspired several imitators, including Candid Huber, a Benedictine monk, whose collection survives in the Bavarian Burgmuseum. Peter the Great eventually acquired a collection for his Kunstkamera in St. Petersburg, and another resides in the Musee National des Techniques of the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers in Paris.
The cited text above is excerpted from Chapter IV (“Museums and the Natural World”) in Curiosity and Enlightenment: Collectors and Collections from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century, by Arthur MacGregor (Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, 2007) – a comprehensive history of cabinets of curiosities, museums, and specialized collections.
Small-format photos of Schildbach’s collection are available at the webpage of the Naturkundemuseum in the Ottoneum at Kassel. The embedded photo is from a similar Holzbuch in a collection at the Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe. Other examples may be seen here and here. The creation of such “wooden books” seems to have been primarily a European endeavor; a related project by Romeyn B. Hough collecting North American woods in book form (using thin sections of wood attached to cardboard within a conventional book binding) was produced at the turn of the last century.
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Incredible Tree Growth
One of the most amazing things about plants is their ability to grow through all kinds of obstacles. When trees manage to do so, the spectacle is even more amazing because it is on such a grand scale. There are even more cool ones when you follow the link.
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Moon Trees
The ultimate backyard status symbol is a tree that has been to the moon. There are hundreds of them, and most are unaccounted for. Astronaut Stuart Roosa took a packet of tree seeds on the Apollo 14 mission to the moon in 1971. After orbiting the moon 34 times, the seeds were planted on earth and grew into trees.
Everyone wanted a Moon tree. In 1975 and ‘76, trees were sent to the White House, to Independence Square in Philadelphia, to Valley Forge. “One tree went to the Emperor of Japan. Senators wanted trees to dedicate buildings. We even did some plantings in New Orleans because the mayor there, Mayor Moon, wanted some,” says Krugman. There were so many requests that “we had to produce additional seedlings from rooted cuttings of the original trees.”
No one kept systematic records, notes Dave Williams. That’s why the whereabouts of the trees today are mostly unknown.
There may be a moon tree somewhere near you! Link to story. Link to website. -via reddit
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The Upside Down Forest
At the 50-acre Glacier Gardens in Alaska, designers added an unusual flair by uprooting more than twenty hemlock and spruce trees, flipping them over, and using the trunks as natural flower pots:
During the rehabilitation process, Steve was developing the lower landscaped gardens using a large piece of rented equipment to arrange the masses of soil, roots, plants, trees, and rock dragged down the mountain during the landslide. During the last few hours of equipment rental, the equipment was damaged while moving a large boulder. This boulder has become known as “Steve’s Rock” and is the centerpiece of one of the many waterfalls flowing through Glacier Gardens. Full of frustration about the large repair bill he was sure to see, he used the equipment to pick up a large tree stump and slammed the inverted stump into the ground trunk first. The tree stuck into the soft mud upside down and as the roots hung like the vines of a petunia basket, it only took moments before he had a vision of how to recycle the trees cleared from the development of the property: The Upside Down “Flower Towers.” Each flower tower is made by inverting spruce or hemlock trees with the root ball pointing towards the sky. The stock of the trunk buried 5-7 ft, netting on top, mosses laid down, and nearly 75 – 100 plants planted every year for guest enjoyment.
Official Website via Urlesque (where there are many marvelous pictures)
Image by flickr user John & Peggy Bromley used under creative commons license
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Tree Grows Under Car -Lifts It Up
Junkyard workers in Japan noticed this seedling sprouting up under a car over 25 years ago. They let it grow and now it’s lifted the whole car up in the air. Now they’ve created a shrine around it. Check out the video here.
Link via Boing Boing
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Pootre Art From Plum Trees
Peter Cook and Becky Northey started making what they call Pooktre, the shaped plum trees into art and furniture. They started by making trees into a coffee table and a mirror frame. The chair above is one of the greatest. They harvest the trees in the fall and make new art from the stumps, which make new growth.
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Ascending the Giants
Photo: Sean O’Connor / Freesolo Photography
Peter Beland of The Smithsonian Magazine has a fascinating look at Ascending The Giants, a unique "adventure group" led by arborists Brian French and Will Koomjian. The duo climbs the tallest trees to learn more about the wildlife that lives on the highest branches:
Up in the branches of this goliath, I felt the tree sway back and forth with the wind, an unsettling sensation. From the ground, the nine-foot-wide tree almost seemed sturdy enough to support the earth below it and not the other way around. But from my precarious vantage point in the canopy, I spied a forest floor littered with fallen giants.
“Oh, it’s at least 500 years old; it’s been through plenty of storms," said ATG co-founder Brian French, in an offhand attempt to both reassure and terrify me as we chatted 200 feet up in the tree. "Of course, I could be wrong.” We shot the breeze some more, and as the musk of ancient fir and moss wafted into my nostrils, I was reminded that this is a living organism.
Link | More at Ascending The Giants official website (including a really neat video clip!)
Previously on Neatorama: 10 Most Magnificent Trees in the World
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