All over the North Woods you tend to bump into bundles of bent birches. (See photo above.) They're not always in bunches of course; bent or bowed birches are just as likely to be individual trees. I've often wondered what caused the bowing of the bent birches. Is this a genetic defect? It sometimes appears to have no environmental cause so I guess it could be genetic. On the other hand the bunch of bowed and bent birches above (how's that for an alliteration Whitney?) could possibly have been bent over several years from the weight of successive snows. Whatever the cause of birch bowing and bending, birches are, in my mind, the most beautiful trees in the North Woods. They are lithe and graceful and the paper birches have that surprising bright white bark. I'm not the only one that really likes them either. The sap suckers love the paper and gray birches because I regularly find the birds' geometric pattern of sap holes on those trees. (See one of my earliest posts.) If anyone has a theory on how the birches get bent, I'm all ears.
3 comments:
Robert Frost says:
When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells...
Well, as you probably noticed, I'm no Robert Frost, and now I feel inadequate.
Frost didn't have much of a sense of humor, Van, so there you have him beat. And today the rain refuses retreat. Rats!
XXOO- and see you tomorrow,
Whit
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