trees

There were tulip poplars, also known as yellow poplars or tulip trees. No tulip maples. I’d thought I’d seen the real thing in Washington, DC. No such beauties adorned my backyard.

"Soil creep" is the gradual movement of the substrate downhill over time. It’s a slow process, but all the soil on a slope is moving. Importantly for trees, the soil moves more quickly on the surface than deeper down.

Visitors to Montana’s Jim Girard Memorial Tamaracks Grove near Seeley Lake have differing reactions when viewing Gus for the first time. I was awed by the 163-foot height, craning my neck to see the very tippy top and then tilting back even further to view the additional 10 feet of dead tree top.

I first visited Glacier National Park in June. Though winter had only recently loosened its grip on the Crown of the Continent, there were blue skies and…

One of my favorite places to look in the forest is up. I love the way trees frame patches of sky, and how rays of sun slide over the branches and slant…

Fir trees, decorated and lighted, are such a fixture of American homes at Christmas that it's difficult for us to imagine that it was not always so. But…

The ides of November, a time of limbo between autumn and winter. It is my birthday. I take a walk in celebration of existence. The atmosphere is cool and…

Every autumn, deciduous trees and shrubs shed their leaves. In some years, leaves are shed earlier than in others. Why does this happen? What determines…

As I split and stacked my winter firewood this fall in preparation for the long nights to come, trees in the surrounding forest were also preparing for…

The hot summer sun beats down on my back as I climb the trail to the ridge. Looking for a place to wait for my hiking companion, I find a grove of quaking…