A-B-Tree / A-B-Craobh

willow catkins (from cybercrofter)

In the Scottish Highlands, Mandy Haggith at cybercrofter is celebrating the International Year of the Forest with a fascinating project, exploring the ancient links between the Gaelic alphabet and trees in Scotland, with ecology, folklore, practical tree knowledge and creative writing. “I have now completed 18 creative writing events, one for each tree associated with a letter of the Gaelic alphabet,” she writes.

So that’s phase 1 of the project complete, and now I’m getting under way with phase 2, which is to gather all of the information I have collected about the trees and write it up. Quite what form that writing will take is still pretty fluid, and I’m open to suggestions.

Stop by to read her ideas and weigh in. The project, called, A-B-Tree / A-B-Craobh, also has its own webpage.

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What is a forest?

This year, 2011, marks the International Year of the Forest. But what is a forest? Judging by the works of several academics, it may not mean what we think it does, as arbiculturist Adam Winson explains. Here’s a snippet:

According to the FAO, both an industrial eucalyptus tree monoculture plantation and a rainforest with its hundreds of different tree species are classed as forest. But neighbours of such vegetation types would only recognize the rainforest as a forest, while a tree monoculture plantation would often be referred to as a “green desert”. The only similarity a neighbour may indeed observe is that both types of vegetation contain trees.

Read the rest.