Recently in other trees Category

While examining my tree closely looking for any signs of sticky burrs or new leaves or anything really, I noticed that several of the branches have no buds at all. The tips of all these branches are so barren looking. They look almost broken off at the end.  Are these dead? I wonder if there is any chance that their buds will grow later.



It seems so sad that these dead branches are still hanging on the tree while that broken-off top branch I found in the snow was all covered with buds. I wonder if these have stayed on because they were protected from the wind and storms down here. But did that also mean that they didn't get enough light? Why did they die? And is it bad for the tree to have dead branches hanging on it?

I walked around the tree to get a different look at the dead branches and suddenly noticed two spots on the trunk where it looks like largish limbs must have been cut off of my tree.





And this reminded me of my little half-tree Bud on the other side of the house. So I paid him a visit to get a picture of the part that was dead for so long and then removed last year.



Ugh. That is just plain old wrong looking. It looks like a tree growing out of a tree or almost like the original tree was impaled by this other part. Yikes. Despite having this rather gruesome scar, Bud actually looks fine when he's got all his leaves. He's a sweet little tree.

I wanted to get a picture of the good side of Bud, so I went up on to the balcony and tried to get a photo of the crown.



You can still see the section that was cut off down there, but up here you can also see the pinky/red fleshy sort of buds that are growing on the tips and ends of Bud's twigs. There are a lot fewer buds on Bud than on my tree. Different growths for different folks, I guess. There are also lots of ridges on the twigs around the buds. Hmmm...I wonder what kind of tree Bud is???

My husband has been listening to me talk about trees for over a week now. And he still reads this little blog. Aw. After reading one of my posts about drawing my tree earlier this week, he drew his own tree.



 
He drew this tree using a computer programming language called Logo, which was developed in the 80's for teaching computer science in a constructivist framewok. (For more on the history of Logo, check out the Logo Foundation website.) Hubby explains how he drew his tree: Logo has a screen on which sits a "turtle." The turtle has a pen attached to its tail and understands commands like "walk forward," "walk backward," "turn left," and "turn right."



That's all you need to draw a tree. Here's his program:

to tree :size
if :size >= 5 [
 forward :size
 left 60
 tree :size / 2
 right 60
 tree :size / 2
 right 60
 tree :size / 2
 left 60
 back :size]
end

Which means:

if the current size is greater or equal than 5 then do the following:
o draw a line of length size in the current direction
o turn left by 60 degrees
o draw a tree of half the current size
o turn right by 60 degrees
o draw a tree of half the current size
o turn right by 60 degrees
o draw a tree of half the current size
o turn left by 60 degrees
o draw a line of length size backward

Different trees can be made by varying the minimum size (here 5), the rotation angle and the proportion of the child trees to their parents.

Apparently, it's a simple exercise in recursion, which involves the repetition of the same form or function. Hubby says he started thinking about the Logo tree when he read this passage in my post from Monday about the groups of smaller branches that seemed to pop out of the main branches all around the same spot: "And in fact, they are very reminiscent of the original four limbs all bursting out of the main trunk at around the same height. I can see this same pattern repeated in some of the smaller branches too." He explained, that's what makes drawing a tree so simple with this program: the tree is just a bunch of smaller versions of itself (each made up of even smaller versions, etc.) attached to each other.

Neat-o!

Yesterday was such an unexpectedly lovely day in the middle of this frigid, snow-overfilled winter that I decided to take a quick walk around the block to look at the trees.

The first tree I always see is the one that is in front of our door. This is not the tree I am watching for this investigation. That one is on the side of the house. This tree is a smaller, sadder sort of half-tree. You can see the part that is missing in the picture. That part was there for years, but it was always dead. It never grew any leaves or anything. The town's Department of Public Works cut that part off last year in what seemed to be a big tree pruning, removing, replanting effort.



I like to think of this tree as Bud. He's like that little boy that Rudy in the Cosby Show brought home and ordered around. I don't know his real name and, despite the fact that he's always there, I don't really pay attention to him. Buuuuud. I had actually decided to have Bud be "my tree" for this study, but my husband pointed out that I could see the tree on the side of our house much more clearly and it was just "a better tree." I agreed, although I'd be hard-pressed to tell you what exactly makes that tree "a better tree" because I kinda like Bud. Since I'd started thinking of Bud as "my tree", we bonded. You'll definitely see more pictures of Bud and the changes he's going through as this blog continues.

On my walk, I noticed that Bud is not the same kind of tree as my tree (which, due to it's prouder and prettier appearance, I am tempted to call Rudy). Bud has little pointy reddish buds at the tips of his branches and a lot fewer of them. His bark too, while bumpy and cracked, is still much smoother than that of my tree.

On to the next street, which was another place the Department of Public Works was hard at work on last year.



I always loved this street because there were giant trees lining it on both sides. In the fall there was a canopy of beautiful leaves above and scattered below. (My appreciation was certainly affected by the fact that I don't live on this street and never had to gather any of the leaves!) But - yes, as you can tell from the photo, there is a but - the sidewalks had developed serious cracks from all the roots. Some of the cracks extended up into people's cement steps up to their houses. It was tricky pushing a stroller or a shopping cart over the sidewalks here and treacherous in the snow and ice. I'm not sure if there was anything else wrong with the trees, but one day, the DPW just showed up and cut all of them down on one side. Then they started redoing the sidewalks and steps. Then they planted the darling little baby trees in the new cutouts.

I was crushed to see half the trees go. The whole street looks uneven now and autumn is just not the same without them. I also can't stop thinking about the people who live on that side of the street. What is it like now that they have so much more light? Do they have to rearrange their furniture? Get new curtains? How about their feeling of privacy? Security? Imagine, twenty, thirty years, your whole life in a house maybe, and then no more tree.

I took a closer look at one of the older trees on the street. This one has leafy reddish buds that look almost sculptural or decorative.



And here's one like I saw in science class with branches that look like alien hands with long, skinny fingers and a white, round bud at the end of each. Beautiful and creepy at the same time.



Hey, look at the way the trunk grew on this tree. What could possibly make it do that?



And this one is covered with red berries. Wow. In February!



This one is covered with little whiskers.



And this one is covered in what look like sticky burrs.



This one still has its dead brown leaves. How is that even possible?



Coooooool bark, dude.



These here are like completely black.



But none of them is my tree.