Festival of the Trees #60!

The 60th edition of the Festival of the Trees is live at Rubies in Crystal, and what a feast it is! Quite a few participants responded to Brenda’s request to “record an engagement with a tree or trees” in multimedia form. As she observes in her introduction, “trees speak to us.”

Just this morning, in fact, as I sat out on my front porch admiring the big tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) in bloom at the edge of the woods, peering through binoculars at the enormous yellow-and-orange cups dripping with nectar, I suddenly started to imagine the frustrated trumpeting of mastodons and the grunting of giant ground sloths straining to reach the blossoms. It occurred to me why tulip trees might grow so tall so quickly, accustomed as they have been for most of their evolutionary history to the presence of very large herbivores with very big appetites for sweets!

What do trees say to you? Go visit the latest Festival of the Trees to read, watch, and listen to what others have heard.