Call for Submissions - Festival #24

On June 1, the Festival of the Trees will have successfully weathered its first two years — knock on wood — and who better to host it than Wren of Wrenaissance Reflections? A long-time participant and stalwart supporter of the festival, she also hosted the first anniversary edition last year at her old blog.

For many parts of the northern hemisphere, the end of May coincides with the height of breeding bird activity, as well as the end of the flowering and beginning of the fruiting season for most trees. Practically every tree and shrub will have stories to tell. If you live elsewhere in the world, your accounts of arboreal doings will seem all the more wondrous to the rest of us. One way or another, please share! Email the permalink to your blog post or photo set by May 29 to jlblum [at] Wrenaissance [dot] com, with “Festival of the Trees” in the subject line, or, as always, avail yourself of the handy online submission form.

Festival #23 - (Not Quite) 10,000 Trees

Sexy maples, enormous magnolias, the world’s oldest living tree, the death of a baobab, specular displays of redbud — these are a few of the arboreal marvels on display in the latest edition of the Festival of the Trees, hosted at 10,000 Birds. Complex conservation issues take center stage in several of the linked posts. For example, what kind of street trees are the best for wildlife, and are they also the ones that sequester the most carbon dioxide? Should the National Arbor Day Foundation be distributing non-native trees? And how can we help restore the endangered Atlantic Forest of Brazil? Ponder these questions and more at Festival #23.

Call for Submissions - Festival #23

Mike of 10,000 Birds is the founder of I and the Bird, the bi-weekly blog carnival for birds and bird lovers and our chief inspiration when we founded the Festival of the Trees almost two years ago. So we’re very pleased and honored to announce that he’ll be hosting the next edition of the Festival on May 1. After all, what could be a more logical combination than birds and trees?

This won’t be a themed festival per se, though we do hope to increase participation among birders and other nature-lovers whose links and visits have made 10,000 Birds one of the most popular birding blogs on the web, and one of the top ten nature blogs overall. If you haven’t submitted to the Festival in recent months, this would be a good time to get outside, enjoy the spring or autumn weather, depending on which hemisphere you reside in, and gather material for the best tree-related post you can write. You can either email your permalinks to mike (at) 10000birds (dot) com, send them via the Contact page at 10,000 Birds, or submit them via our online submission form — whichever is most convenient. The deadline for submissions is April 29.

Festival of The Trees #22 - Festival das Árvores nº 22

Our first bilingual edition — the first of many, we hope — is up at the Brazilian blog Árvores Vivas em Nossas Vidas. Those of us who can only read English may have had to wait an extra day (due to technical difficulties, not to Dave procrastinating, we swear!), but that’s O.K. It’s only fitting that Portuguese should have pride-of-place around here. Name another country more closely associated with trees and forests than the one that contains the bulk of the Amazon rainforest, which despite the depredations of cattle ranchers and soybean farmers, is still by far the largest and most biodiverse rainforest ecosystem in the world. (True, Lebanon actually has a tree on its flag… and if and when a Lebanese blogger volunteers to host an Arabic-English edition of the festival, we’ll say flattering things about his/her country, too.)

At any rate, Juliana put a lot of extra time and effort into assembling this edition, so please pay her a visit, and link from your own blog, as well.

Call for Submissions - Festival #22

The April edition of the Festival of the Trees will be our first to appear on a non-Anglophone blog. Árvores Vivas em Nossas Vidas is one of a growing number of Lusophone tree blogs, and Juliana promises a fully bilingual festival post. Send all tree-related links, regardless of language of origin, to arvoresvivas [at] gmail [dot] com by March 28, or use the online submission form.

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In other linguistically related tree-blogging news, the phenomenally popular LOLcats site I Can Has Cheezburger? recently featured its first LOLtree. The captioned image, which is of unknown origin, received 2,614 votes in the viewer-selection process that determines what appears on the blog. In the LOLcat argot, nom is onomatopoeia for the operation of jaws in eating, sometimes also used as a verb meaning “to consume.” We think.

Festival #21, special fruit tree and orchard edition

Peg at Orchards Forever has laid out an orchard’s worth of links, text, and illustrations — go visit! History, folklore, science and conservation all get their due as Peg assembles a convincing case for the importance of fruit trees and orchards. This is our third themed edition of the FOTT, and was, I think you’ll agree, a resounding success.

Call for Submissions - special edition on fruit trees and orchards

The March 1 edition of the Festival of the Trees will be hosted by Peg at Orchards Forever, and submissions are due by February 27. Email links to amberapple at gmail dot com, or use the online submission form.

This will be a themed edition, our third (after “Trees in the Concrete” at Flatbush Gardener last May, and the Halloween edition at Windywillow). Peg writes,

I’d like to try and adhere to a theme of fruit trees and orchards… but virtually anything that is even loosely connected to that theme is welcome! Gardening and growing, horticulture, heirloom fruits, food and recipes, environmental and conservation issues, folklore and mythology, travel, what have you!

Hosting a festival can be a lot of work even without the added obligation of finding links appropriate for a theme, so please help Peg out by sending along anything you happen across that seems appropriate. Also, you might consider visiting a local orchard and blogging about it. For folks in the northern hemisphere, this might not seem like the best time for that, but actually things might be pretty interesting right now, as the trees try to survive the winter and the teams of migrant pruners make their rounds. And if you have a few fruit trees of your own, maybe they’d appreciate a little extra attention…

Festival #20 is up

Visit Ginkgo Dreams for a wide-ranging assortments of links and illustrations, including the first link to Boing Boing TV in the history of the festival.

Submissions were down this time, which probably means we all need to do a better job getting the word out. If your own post was included in the festival, be sure to link to it and tell other bloggers about it.

On the plus side, there seem to be more tree blogs than ever. Tree Species makes its first appearance in the Festival this month, and I see a couple of other blogs in the sidebar of that blog that may also merit inclusion in the “Blogs About Trees” portion of our own blogroll here.

I also want to take this opportunity to welcome the brand-new blog carnival Berry Go-Round, which is devoted to plant life of all kinds. The first edition has just appeared.

Call for Submissions - Festival #20

As noted in the sidebar (and at the end of the current edition), the next Festival of the Trees will appear on February 1 at Ginkgo Dreams, the world’s only blog dedicated exclusively to Ginkgo biloba. Please send any and all tree-related links to kelly (at) ginkgodreams (dot) com with “Festival of the Trees” in the subject line, or use the automated submission form. The deadline is January 29.

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This will actually be Kelly’s second go at hosting; last February, Festival #8 also put up its tent at Ginkgo Dreams. We salute her public-spiritedness — but we’re also always eager to hear from people who are interested in hosting for the first time, and we’re happy to walk you through the process. See our “Volunteer to Host” page for more details. April is still open, as are July, August and beyond.

Festival #19 is up

Happy New Year! Festival of the Trees #19 is a real holiday treat. Mull some cider, pop some corn and cuddle up with a warm laptop. Lorianne has gathered a forest’s worth of links for your browsing pleasure.

If you have a blog of your own, please consider posting about the festival (especially if one of your own posts was included). FOTT hosts work hard, and deserve all the links we can give them. And speaking of hosting, we’re still looking for a volunteer to take the April Fool’s Day slot.

Photo by Dr_John2005, used by permission. Click on the photo for more information.