Industry story
Forest vocabulary deepens the experience of trees in your garden
gardening sustainability wildlife-habitat
Poet and editor Hannah Fries’s, author of 'A Forest Language,' joined gardener and host Margaret Roach to walk through a collection of tree and forest terms — each paired with a short essay — that name things gardeners already observe but may lack words for. Among them: marcescence (the dry, brown leaves that beech and oak trees hold through winter, finally dropping when new buds swell in spring); crown shyness (the way treetops of neighboring trees grow up to but not over one another, leaving rivers of sky between them); burls (knobby growths caused by small damage that disrupts normal growth, producing the swirled wood prized by woodworkers); nurse logs (fallen trees that become nurseries for seedlings, mosses, and insects); and snags (standing dead or dying trees that provide critical habitat). Fries also distinguishes sap — nearly 98% water, flowing through living sapwood — from pitch or resin, which is sticky and serves as the tree's immune system, sealing wounds; Norway spruce resin has been studied for wound-healing properties in humans as well.
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Poet and editor Hannah Fries’s, author of 'A Forest Language,' joined gardener and host Margaret Roach to walk through a collection of tree and forest terms — each paired with a short essay — that name things gardeners already observe but may lack words for. Among them: marcescence (the dry, brown leaves that beech and oak trees hold through winter, finally dropping when new buds swell in spring); crown shyness (the way treetops of neighboring trees grow up to but not over one another, leaving rivers of sky between them); burls (knobby growths caused by small damage that disrupts normal growth, producing the swirled wood prized by woodworkers); nurse logs (fallen trees that become nurseries for seedlings, mosses, and insects); and snags (standing dead or dying trees that provide critical habitat). Fries also distinguishes sap — nearly 98% water, flowing through living sapwood — from pitch or resin, which is sticky and serves as the tree's immune system, sealing wounds; Norway spruce resin has been studied for wound-healing properties in humans as well.
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