hollow paper birch
Paper birch bark resists rot so well that cylinders of bark sit, nearly unaffected, after the wood has entirely rotted away.
Showing all posts tagged bark:
bitternut bark
This bitternut hickory grows by the railroad tracks south of Big Falls. Look for the orange-pink layer peeking between the fibrous ribbons of outer bark.
seen...
How hard it is to suspend the neural impulse to meet this gaze and interpret it! Of course, the tree may be watching me in other ways, but this spot is not more sensitive than any other part of the...
Lenticel patterns
Lenticels are the pores through which a tree exchanges gases along its trunk and stems. On some trees, the lenticels are nearly hidden. On this young tulip tree the lenticels are beautifully expose...
American Elm
A few elms grow adjacent to Big Falls… Their bark is corky, complex, and always pale and patchy in color. The adventitious buds, off to the sides of this large trunk, suggest that this elm may not...
Black walnut
Walnuts and hickories are closely related, and I'm not yet sure I can reliably tell the bark apart. But on the east side of Laurel Brook Rd, there are black walnuts on the ground, and the bark of t...
micro-trails
What tiny creatures worked their way across the landscape of this birch's skin?
braided bark
This beautifully braided texture graces an elder tulip tree. Note the lone samara resting among the ridges of the bark.
Silver maple
Distinguishing silver maple (acer saccharinum, note very small difference in name from acer saccharum, sugar maple) from red maple is difficult, at least before the leaves and fruit emerge. (The le...
hemlock buttons and knobs
Many species can develop burls or tumors, and the site of a branch is a likely place for these to occur. But these burls are remarkably self-contained, developing only around the emerging branch,...
Hemlock's unique annual cork-scars
By my count, at least 24 years’ worth of wound cork were recovered to cover the area of the initial injury. The most likely causes of the initial wound, according to Tom Wessels, would have been lo...
Black oak
I poked around among the leaf litter until I confirmed that there was indeed a typical black oak leaf to associate with this tree. Black oak is outnumbered here by red oak, but their profile from a...
young conifer with character
I believe this is a young red pine, but failed to document other features of this tree...
pignut hickory
The pignut bark may look almost shiny when young -- the outer layer has a bit of a sheen, and is only a bit broken up by vertical lines of strain. New bark layers seem to build up under the protect...