This beautifully illustrated essay collection offers a curious and creative invitation into the world of trees and the words we use to understand them.
What is crown shyness, and how could a tree be shy? What is heartwood, and what does it have to do with the heart? So often even our scientific terms are rife with surprising etymologies and images that may reveal as much about us humans and our relationship to nature as they do about the things they describe. Words related to trees and forests are no exception. With a poet's sensibility, Hannah Fries peels back the layers of these ecological terms, reflecting on their meaning both literally and figuratively, intertwining science and metaphor. Hannah Fries is the author of Being with Trees (Storey) and the poetry collection Little Terrarium (Hedgerow Books). Her poetry and prose have appeared in such places as The Marginalian, Terrain.org, Orion, and American Poetry Review. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and she was awarded a scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. From 2005 to 2014 she was an editor at Orion magazine. She grew up in the woods of New Hampshire and now lives in western Massachusetts with a forester and two tree-climbing kids.
Foreword by Maria Popova
Introduction: The Astonishing Strangeness of Trees
Part 1: Seed & Root
Preforest: Begin Again
Seed Bank: A Forest Lies Waiting
Sessile: How a Tree Wanders
Samara: A Seed with Wings
Catkin: Flowers Without Petals
Mast: The Feast
Stump Sprouts: From the Hidden Roots of Things
Clonal: Self-Replicating to the End
Rhizosphere: A Universe Among Roots
Taproot: The Myth of Digging Deeper
Mycorrhiza: Everything Tangled Together
Windthrow: Ripped from the Earth
Sap: From the Vein of the Tree
Part 2: Growth & Repair
Lignin: Form and Freedom
Growth Ring: Of Ages and Empires
Whorl: Around, Again
Volatile Organic Compounds: Attraction and Repulsion
