PASSION FOR TREES AND WORDS

I learned something about myself this morning.....I am a dendrophile.  The word comes from the Greek words dendron and philos, which mean tree and loving, or fond of.   

One who is a passionate dendrophile cannot understand how and why anyone could want to cut down a tree for greed or for no reason at all.  That's me.

Every dendrophile feels renewed by spending time in a forest.  That's me.

My favorite kind of forest is the tall pines.  Our number one camping ventures were among the tall pines.  I remember the ground covered in pine needles, and searching for pine cones was like looking for sea shells on a beach.  Part of last winter's holiday decorations here were four large cones that I ordered on eBay from Georgia.  They're still on our buffet, where they look like a small grove of trees.  A ceramic brown bear finishes off the vignette.  

To the Iroquois, the white pine is a symbol of the Great Peace that united their separate nations.  In Native American tradition, pine trees are seen as wise elders of the forest that stand tall through the ages. 

The wood of the pine tree is used in construction and to make paper.  Its resin is used to make paints, turpentine and varnishes.  Pine Essential Oil is used in giving massages, as it soothes soreness, aches and pain.  It also stimulates circulation.  Let's not forget the Little Trees pine-scented car deodorizer that we often see dangling from the rear-view mirror.  

Like bamboo, the pine tree symbolizes strength in the face of hardship.  It does not wither during difficult winters. 

For years, the boyfriend belonged to Trees Forever, a nonprofit charitable organization founded in 1989, headquartered in Marion, Iowa.  TF staff volunteers helped community leaders with tree planting projects.  In our village, the boyfriend and his buddies volunteered their time and planted all the new ash trees that replaced the elm trees.  First, it was Dutch Elm disease that destroyed the elm trees, and now the invasion of the Emerald Ash Borer has created another wave of destruction. 

Guess where fossils of the earliest trees and forest were found...... 

"Traces of the earliest trees--and forest--yet to be discovered on Earth were found just outside the Hudson Valley in Gilboa, Schoharie County, New York.  From the fossilized stumps, scientists estimate that the trees, in the genius Wattieza, grew up to 30 feet tall.  Dating back around 375 million years, these ancestors of ferns would have towered over the rest of the plant world, which then consisted primarily of mosses and liverworts.

Gilboa Fossil

"Many of these fossils were unearthed during work to erect and reconstruct the Gilboa Dam, which impounds a reservoir supplying water to New York City.  Today, you can find displays of Wattieza's ancient trunks outside the Gilboa Museum and along NY Route 990V (just north of a dam overlook)." 

(Photo courtesy of NYC Environment Protection)  The fossil stump of an ancient tree was hoisted from the site of its discovery in 1921.  Up until 2019, it was considered the oldest-known forest in the world.  Then a new discovery in southwestern England shows that forests developed in the region  390 million years ago, some four million years earlier than the one in NY.  

Gilboa Fossils, NY

Gilboa Tree looked like

What makes me half crazy is that I was within 50 miles of Gilboa on a trip to Maine.  I'd have given anything to see these fossils with my own eyes.  Guess I have to be grateful to have come across them in my quest to learn about our Mother Earth.  So much to learn, so little time. 

Guess I strayed away from the word that started today's chain of thoughts....the dendrophile.  Kinda reminds me of the word dandruff.  You see, I'm also a logophile, which is a "lover of words."  The Oxford English Dictionary says it's "a person who is obsessively interested in words."  That's me.

Ta-ta.