For a Yankee in the South, everything in the environment scares you. Heat. Humidity. Flying termites season (Seriously, that's one thing). But this Nordrserner -Wentner, who likes cold and snow, recently braved insects, in part, to escape – physically and mentally – from a divorce. As friendly and respectful as our divorce, it always looked like a kind of spiritual death. The end of a life, if not my own life.
So I ate, prayed, I loved my way to visit good friends in the city of the Côte du Golfe de Bay Saint Louis, Miss. I left with the Beguin for a special tree – and this week which includes Easter Sunday, the day of the earth and the day of the ton
While I was heading for a coffee with a few pies of houses in the place of my friends, I saw it. Next to a speed limit panel. A tree branch Doing something I had never seen before.
On the right, I could see a branch of a large school in the decrease bus – where she had not only touched the ground, but had continued to grow and buried in the ground. Looking closer to it, I saw that a brand new trunk was emerged from this same buried wooded mass. The sagged branch had given birth to a new tree.
I did what we do these days and I searched and searched the web to understand what I had seen. The trees were live oak from the south. It seems that what I saw was a natural form of “overlap», By which a branch touches the soil and produced Adventive roots Pushed by hypoxia and hunting for resources. This sagged branch never “dies completely when it touches the ground, but at some point, it can stop being part of its original tree. With new roots, looking for a more recent and more complete life, which he finds as a second tree.
Zoom in this incredible branch to the Southern Live Oak – Virginiana Virginiana – And you can see life itself. Originally from the southeast of the United States, they are known for their longevity, living beyond a thousand years. A kind of key key, the south of living oaks hosts and supports many other various species, including Spanish foams and small ferns. They sponsor a whole ecosystem in their large wooden arms.
They are so robust that the colonists used to search the south of oaks as “storm trees“To get out of hurricanes. And the the oldest ship in the world Still afloat, the constitution of the USS, nicknamed “Old Ironsides”, commanded in 1794 by President George Washington – presents a frame Made of Southern Live Oak.
But it is less these characteristics than the character of the tree that stands out. Its form especially. It's almost horizontal. It reaches you, which is not what you are conditioned to expect from a large tree. The redwoods and others are skyscrapers, rights and distant, while the live oaks in the south spread their branches all around you. It is as close to a hug of a tree as possible. (Treehuggers, take note: it's your favorite partner if you are looking for a leafy action.)
Of the 3 billions of trees On Earth, two South Live Oaks in particular stand out. The McDonogh Oak in New Orleans of the Municipal Park is over 800 years old, long enough to return to the Magna Carta and the Crusades. Hurricane Katrina has shot down more than 2,000 City Park trees, but not McDonogh, although the grandfather's tree now requires crutches to keep its massive members at altitude. Head east to the east of about an hour and you will find the oak of friendship even more economical on the campus of the Gulf of the University of Mississippi in the South. It's old too, at 538 years oldSo he breathed the same air as Christopher Columbus and the 18 generations People who have experienced his birth so far. The friendship oak spreads with 10 plunging tentacles and upwards as a green and terrestrial loch ness monster.
Sometimes we are a little diverted with rabbits and baskets towards this period of the year. But we can go beyond seeing beauty and bonus in our daily biological world. Easter, Earth Day and Day of Arborations – All taking place the same week this year, this Sunday, Tuesday and Friday – share a common accent on renewal, both spiritual and environmental. And somewhere in the middle of this environment is the superposition process of the Southern Live Oak. Heck, even his name includes the word “live”. (This may seem redundant when a plant names, but these things earn the distinction.)
It is from time to time to watch and see that our trees are remarkable, not only resources or obstacles or ornaments. They are life itself – part of our lives, and we are one of their own. They should give us hope.
When I got home in Colorado, I was greeted by views of scrambled pine and oak, in time to see the buds open at the ends of so many twigs. Of course, our local trees are not as impressive as southern oak, but their potential and their promise are the same: each pineon and acorn has a chance to transform into another powerful tree, a thought that gave me a flash of hope.
Easter eggs are everywhere, if you know where to look for.
Ml Cavanaugh is the author of the next book “Best Scar Winds: How You Can't more than before.” @Mlcavanaugh
