My Life With Trees
My house is built of heartwood and this makes it old, 1896 in fact. This center-most wood of the trunk, heartwood, is a different color than the more exterior cylinder of the trunk that is called sapwood as water and sap flow through it. Wood is not only colored by age, heartwood being darker, but also by mineral content, just like rock. Today, heartwood is recycled from old buildings because of its great rarity and value. Trees are harvested so young nowadays that the lumber is sapwood in the main. Heartwood is wise and permanent, imperious to water and air; sapwood like a still forming teenager is susceptible.
Trees inhale air and exhale moisture, brought up through its roots by cellular pressure. A might oak—a hard wood and one of the most common and venerated for furniture to floors and burning—can express as much as 300 gallons of water a day.
While we have over 600 species native to North America, almost all in the U.S., most of our fruit trees were originated from the Middle East. Fruit trees were carried across the country by settlers. The avocado was propagated by the Aztecs. Columbus brought the first oranges and lemons to the Americas.
I can remember every tree I have ever planted on my own property…red bud, emerald arborvitae, juniper, fir, silver maple, Japanese maple, cherry blossom, crepe myrtle. Then there’s ones planted in public gardens: a cypress, a locust, columnar junipers.
Like astrological signs or the animals associated with the Chinese birth years, there are trees associated with birth years. Accordingly, I am a Pisces, Dog and lime tree. A tree can be a measure of a life in a number of respects. The cedar dug up at my friend Kip’s place was a mere three feet and is now the tallest tree I have ever nurtured. In 15+ years we have both grown, though the cypress—planted in the back of my yard in the very center just as in my parent’s yard—has grown four times as tall as I have.
Essay by Rosie Dempsey
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