The oldtimer and the tree

The tree lived for 217 years and the man who kept it alive has now died at a little less than half that. Frank Knight (pictured above in 2009 with "Herbie" behind him and in 2010 after the tree was cut down, video here) had been the tree warden of Yarmouth, Maine, for more than 50 years. "Frank’s passion for the town, its trees, and his kind and gentle manner was an inspiration to all those who knew him," reads a statement from the Maine Department of Conservation on Frank's passing at the age of 103. Dutch elm disease was killing trees by the hundreds when Frank began as a volunteer, so he focused his efforts on one giant elm that at 110' could be seen from miles away. With pruning and pesticide, he was able to nurse the tree through 14 rounds of the disease, until it finally had to be taken down 2 years ago. At that time, Knight - by then a legend among schoolchildren and forestry workers - said, "His time has come. And mine is about due, too." At the request of his family, and without Frank's knowledge, custom furniture maker Chris Becksvoort built a simple casket from wood of the tree which had been set aside. The centenarian will be laid to rest in it after dying in hospice on Monday. "To have them together like that is a wonderful thing. I feel like Frank took good care of Herbie. Now Herbie will take good care of Frank," says friend and successor Deb Hopkins.

"It's been a beautiful tree. I'm sorry to see it go. But nothing is forever....And it's just a fact of life that life is going to end. And that's for people, for trees, for everything. I thank the good Lord every day that we had him in his glory and beauty for so long."

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Plenty of previous posts about trees:

Chêne chapelle

"These things are enormous"

Senator no longer stands

Tempting tree trunk

World's largest treehouse(s)

Cut down

2 morbid mysteries

600 years apart

Leaves don't leap...

Tyburn tree

Tree mummies

Dendochronology

Suicide forest

Hub Pages

Daily Mail

In the United States, suicides throw themselves off the Golden Gate Bridge. In Australia, they jump from the Gap into Sydney Harbor. In Japan, they hang themselves in Aokigahara (青木ヶ原) forest at the base of Mount Fuji. Geologist Azusa Hayano has been traipsing the area for more than 30 years, seeing the evidence of despair and intervening to save lives. He took a film crew from Vice.com into the dense forest (photos on Oddity Central and Environmental Graffiti), which is associated with demons in Japanese mythology and widely believed to be haunted (watch 21-min. video or 10-min. version). One source attributes the haunting not only to the suicides, but to the earlier custom of abandoning the elderly - Ubasute, which some practiced in Aokigahara. In a tradition known historically for the ritual act of harakiri or seppuku, today's suicides are attributed to social isolation and increasingly to the economy. "I think it's impossible to die heroically by committing suicide," says Hayano.

Thanks, Robert!

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Previous posts about suicide:

Library jumpers

Child suicides

Evelyn McHale

The Sorrows of Young Werther

Whipple Bartlett

Suicide by animal

"Seven Pounds"

Shakespeare's Ophelia

Chêne chapelle

Having posted about trees* and treehouses** many times, I was surprised to learn on "Jeopardy" last night of le Chêne chapelle, France's oldest tree (images above, more photos here and here). Thought to be between 800 and 1.200 years old, the oak was ancient by the time of Louis XIV (1638-1715) and Napoleon (1769-1821). More than a century earlier than that, it had been struck by lightning, which burned through the center of its trunk. The local abbot built 2 shrines in the hollow of the tree in 1669, Notre Dame de la Paix and the Chambre de l'Ermite, one of which is accessed by an external staircase. Located in the village of Allouville-Bellefosse in Haute-Normandie, the oak has been reinforced with poles and cables, and the missing bark has been covered with wooden shingles. Mass has been held at the tree twice a year and it is the destination of an annual pilgrimage on the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin. Le Chêne chapelle is included in lists (here and here) of the world's most incredible trees.

*Senator no longer stands, Arboreal goats, Cut down, Leaves don't leap, Tree mummies, Gingko, Elephants eat Christmas trees!, Spanish moss
**Adventurers Club, Castaways, Real and imagined, World's largest treehouse(s)

"These things are enormous"

It has been a week of superlatives - earliest, smallest, largest, longest - so why not top it off with some enormous pine cones?! These monsters (1st image) began dropping from a
120-year-old bunya pine for the 1st time in 15 years - "And when they come down they don't give you any warning!" says the owner of a similar tree (2nd image). This tree stands above the Courthouse Hotel and Cafe in Warragul, Victoria, Australia, and has been dropping pine cones as heavy as 22lb (10kg) each. Even though it's on private property, the danger to the public prompted the Baw Baw Shire Council to send an arborist up on an elevated platform yesterday to remove the remaining 6 cones. “These huge pine cones have the capacity to be lethal if they were to fall on someone passing underneath from such a large height,” said Mayor Diane Blackwood. "They are the size of a watermelon, falling literally out of the sky from potentially 20m [65 1/2'] high. So you wouldn't want to be under one, I tell you."

Senator no longer stands

This post is not about politics. It is about a tree - a very old tree - that burned to the ground in January (slideshow here). Growing for 3,500 years in what is now Longwood, Florida, this particular tree was not only the largest pond cypress in the U.S., but the largest tree of any species east of the Mississippi River. The cypress (Taxodium distichum) was 17.5' (5.3m) in diameter and 35.4' (10.8m) in circumference, with purple-green flowers hanging in long tassels, needle- or fern-like leaves, and spherical cones. Predating them by millennia, the giant was used as a landmark by the Seminole Indians. It was only in the 20th c. that "The Senator" acquired its nickname, a nod to the man who donated the land it is on to the county in 1927. Big Tree Park was dedicated in 1929, even though a hurricane had taken off the top of the biggest tree 4 years earlier, reducing it from a height of 165' (50m) to 118' (36m). The Senator's age estimate was based on a core sample bored by the American Forestry Association in 1946. Local resident Jeff Serraes recalls the draw of the cypress in the 1960s, before the arrival of the region's theme parks: "It was a tourist attraction. It cost 25 cents to get in. There was nothing to do in Sanford back in those days. You had the zoo and Big Tree Park." Now the park is without its celebrity, which has been reduced to a 20' stump. At 5:50am on Jan. 16, firefighters responded to the fire and had to run more than 800' of hose through the woods to reach the tree. At 7:45am, a 20' section at the top of the tree toppled and within a 1/2 hour, more of the trunk collapsed. A sheriff's helicopter was used to dump water on the smoldering tree, which - because it was hollow - had burned for several hours from the inside out, like a chimney. At that time, we were led to believe that arson had been ruled out as the cause of the fire, and lightning was suggested even though there was none in the area that night. Well, news broke last night that it was in fact arson. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services arrested 26-year-old Sarah Barnes on charges of intentional burning of land, a third-degree felony, in addition to possession of methamphetamine with intent to sell and possession of drug paraphernalia. She and a friend had been inside the tree taking meth and reportedly lit a fire so they could see better. After the Senator ignited, Barnes took photos of the tree in flames with her cell phone, which she later uploaded to her laptop. Her downfall? Showing people the images and admitting, "I can't believe I burned down a tree older than Jesus."

Tempting tree trunk

After seeing this story yesterday, I am left wondering how this California man managed to keep his identity a secret from the media. But the larger question is what possessed him to lower himself into a hole in a tree in the first place? "Why he's in a tree, I have no idea," said Battalion Chief Kris Concepcion of the Orange County Fire Authority. Finding himself in the ridiculous situation of being stuck up to his shoulders in the trunk of a hollow tree (pictured, more photos here), all the young man could do was scream for help. Luckily, his cries were heard and reported, and Orange County deputies responded to a Laguna Hills intersection. Following the noise down a creek bed, they found the trapped man at about 10:30am on Tuesday. He had climbed into the narrow hole near the base of the tree which led some 4' or 5' underground, leaving only his head and arms visible. Firefighters were called on to free him, which they did in about an hour and a half. The branches of the tree were cut, but its victim suffered no injuries, although the status of his mental health was evaluated. As strange as this story is, at least it did not involve murder, like the last time a hollow tree made the news.

World's largest treehouse(s)

I read an article last night about the Guiness Book of World Records possibly naming a treehouse in Tennessee, U.S., as the world's largest. Thinking it blogworthy, I went in search of some good photos. That's when I learned that a treehouse in Alnwick, U.K., also bills itself as the world's largest. Rather than quibble, I offer them both.

The Minister's Treehouse
(1st, 2nd, and 3rd images)
Location: Crossville, Cumberland County, Tennessee, U.S.A.
Cost: $12,000
Construction details: Built on an 80' white oak that is 12' wide at its base, the treehouse is now supported by 6 trees. The 10-story structure is 97' tall, with 8,000 sq. ft. of space that includes a sanctuary that doubles as a basketball court when the pews are moved to the side, a spiral staircase, a choir loft and balcony, a penthouse, a skylight, and a bell tower. The treehouse took 258,000 nails and several tons of reclaimed lumber from garages, storage sheds, and barns to build.
Description: Self-taught carpenter Horace Burgess, 56, began the project after a revelations in 1993. "I was praying one day, and the Lord said, 'If you build me a treehouse, I'll see you never run out of material,'" describes Burgess, whose vision unfolded like a slideshow in the space of 4 minutes. He holds an informal church service each Sunday afternoon. He does not charge admission to the 400-500 visitors who pass through each week. From the upper floors, they look down on a garden with daffodils, irises, narcissus, gladiolas and wild daisies to spell out the letters J-E-S-U-S. "The whole message of the thing is if you come to see the site and climb to the top, you'll see Jesus in the garden, and the preacher didn't have to say a word," Burgess says, smiling broadly.
Sources and additional photos:
AtlasObscura.com, Damncoolpictures.com, Funenclave.com, Inhabitat.com, Time.com, USAToday.com,

The Treehouse at Alnwick Garden
(4th, 5th, and 6th images)
Location: Alnwick, Northumberland County, UK.
Cost: $7 million
Construction details: This 56' tall, 6,000 sq. ft. treehouse was built from sustainable resources, including Canadian cedar, Scandinavian redwood, and English and Scots pine,
It was designed by architects and encompasses a 120-seat restaurant that serves local produce, a fireplace, a retail shop, classrooms, play areas, an expansive deck area, and several outbuildings, all built off the ground and connected by walkways and suspension bridges. The structure stretches the definition of a treehouse because it is held up by concrete braces and wooden supports. It is wheelchair accessible and holds close to 1,000 people.
Description: The treehouse was opened to the public in early 2005 at the non-profit Alnwick Garden. It is open year-round. The promotional copy reads, "At the heart of The Treehouse is one of the most beautiful and unique restaurants to be found anywhere in the world. There’s a roaring log fire in the centre of the room, trees growing through the floor, handcrafted furniture and screens created from fallen branches. Most importantly, the locally-inspired food is delicious. At the top of The Treehouse is the Nest, a hideaway for private dining and small parties, and out on the deck there’s The Treehouse bar, serving drinks into the evening."
Sources and additional photos:
AlnwickGarden.com, Curious-Places.blogspot.com, Forbes.com, Groovygreen.com, Saynotocrack.com, Thetreehouseguide.com, VisitNortheastEngland.com.

Leafsnap

Peter Belhumeur is a professor of computer science at Columbia University and director of the Laboratory for the Study of Visual Appearance. It was his 8-year-old son William who suggested he create an application that identifies plants using the face recognition technology he has worked on since the mid-1990s. With the help of colleagues from Columbia, the University of Maryland, and the Smithsonian Institution, he has done just that! Using the same algorithms that can process the curves and angles of a human face, he designed a program that will narrow down (smooth versus jagged, many-lobed or single-lobed) and determine plant species based on the shapes of their leaves. LeafSnap, an electronic field guide very useful to botanists but easy enough for a child to use, is now available free* for the iPhone and iPad, and will be available for Android phones later this year. Users - and there are already 150,000 - photograph a leaf, upload it, and see a list of possible matches within seconds, along with other characteristics (flowers, fruit, seeds and bark) to help confirm the tree's identity. Below is the data that accompanies images of the plant I chose to feature:

Paper Mulberry

Broussonettia papyrifera

Native to

eastern Asia, this species is now widely naturalized in the eastern United States where it was introduced for its ornamental value. Its leaves are highly variable in shape, even on the same branch, but are usually 7-20 cm long with a rough surface above and fuzzy below. The juicy red fruits are edible and sweet, but are very fragile and not suitable for commercialization.

Habitat:Grows in a wide variety of habitats.

Growth Habit: Fast-growing tree to 12 m, with round crown, sprouts into thickets.

Bloom Time: Late spring.

Presence in US: AL AR CT DC DE FL GA HI IL IN KS KY LA MD MO MS NC NJ NY OH OK PA SC TN TX VA

Belhumeur’s student volunteers photographed 1,000s of leaves from the 145 species in New York's Central Park and the 160 species in Washington, D.C.’s Rock Creek Park. The database covers most native species in the northeast, with plans to add the additional species native to North America, and possibly other continents. “It was fun to take that visual recognition technology and drop it into this domain, working with biologists and doing something I cared about as a kid,” says Belhumeur. Speaking of which, his son is already dreaming up new apps. “I think it is time for Fishsnap and Bugsnap,” says William, “so there is still a lot of work to do.”

*Leafsnap cost about $2.5 million to develop, funded primarily by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Follow-ups

Views from space 1/11/09 An incredible photograph that shows an avalanche on Mars!

Recent feral children 1/10/09 "Cambodian jungle girl" Rochom P'ngieng, who spent 18 years in the jungle before being found and returned to her family in 2007, has begun to speak again.

Follow-ups 1/9/09 In a follow-up to a follow-up, I linked to a story about a chicken in a sweater. Apparently, it's not the only chicken to be sporting clothing.

Hit and (unsuccessful) run 1/6/09 A 23-year-old woman inTokyo struck and killed an 80-year-old pedestrian, then drove 8km home with the woman's body lodged in her windshield.

Follow-ups 1/4/09 In this set of follow-ups, I linked to a story about a dog whose strangled tongue had swollen to several times normal size. Here is a story about a dog learning to cope after getting its tongue stuck in a paper shredder.

2009 in review 12/31/09 While USA Today suggests that the word "tweet" be tossed, the American Dialect Society has voted it the 2009 Word of the Year.

Eye news 11/21/09 Recent news articles about special effects contact lenses and prisoners tattooing the whites of their eyes sent me searching for weird contact lenses: cat eyes, spirals, fire, Hello Kitty, and extra-wide for that anime look (pictured). And if those aren't strange enough, here are some that offer eye jewelry.

Alligator urban legends 11/14/09 Some photos of Nile crocodiles hatching from their eggs.

Circus animals on the lam 11/13/09 The hippo at a private zoo in Montenegro has escaped in a flood.

Library of Human Imagination 11/9/09 Another wealthy man, Scott Jones, has been able to outfit the house of his dreams - including this spiral stair slide!

Fatal coyote attack 11/2/09 Two boys in British Columbia, Canada, were saved from cougar attacks - one by his dog and the other by his Mom. By the way, the cougar, puma, and mountain lion are all the same animal.

Happy Halloween! 10/31/09 My Mom pointed out an article in a magazine about the town of Collinsville, Connecticut, where we lived in the late 1970s/early 1980s. Who knew that after I moved away, a huge Halloween tradition would begin?! I found lots of other celebrations of my favorite holiday on the web: Greenwich Village, New York; Meadville, Media, and Nazareth, Pennsylvania; Little Five Points, Georgia; Anoka, Minnesota; Toms River, New Jersey; Morris Cove, Connecticut; North Halsted, Illinois; West Hollywood, California; Bonner Springs, Kansas; Wellfleet, Massachusetts; Rutland, Vermont; Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Key West, Florida; and Georgetown in Washington, D.C. Good to see so much spirit out there!

Shackleton 10/28/09 Here is a fascinating look inside the hut used by British explorer Robert F. Scott on his Antarctic expedition.

The Mary Rose 10/15/09 A 1925 Bugatti that spent 73 years at the bottom of a Swiss lake has been raised and auctioned.

World's heaviest insects 8/28/09 CBS Sunday Morning featured the insect art of Christopher Marley.

Femur scepter 7/18/09 Scientists in Italy have developed a way of turning rattan wood into bone that is almost identical to the human tissue.

Hazards of hail 6/16/09 A woman in Lakeland, Florida, has kept a "pet snowball" in her freezer for 33 years!

"Seven Pounds" 6/14/09 A man fishing off the side of huge ship off north Queensland, Australia, was stung by a jellyfish that was carried up 25M by a spray of water. A woman in Buffalo, New York, had to make the agonizing decision of who to donate her kidney to - her brother or her sister.

Oldtimer 6/6/09 Miep Gies, the Dutch woman who hid Anne Frank and her family for 2 years and saved the teenager's diary, has died at the age of 100. Dorothy Geeben, America's oldest active mayor, has died at the age of 102. Joe Rollino, famous Coney Island strongman, was struck and killed by a car at 104. Frank Knight, a Maine centenarian, has to cut down a 240-year-old tree that he has been nursing for 50 years.

Elusive animals 6/4/09 An invertebrate zoologist in South Carolina has determined that the green sea slug produces enough chlorophyll to be considered both an animal and a plant. Scientists have found that killer whales in the North Atlantic are in the process of splitting into 2 different species. A nocturnal cricket that pollinates orchids has been discovered on an island in the Indian Ocean. A new and very large (14cm) spider has been found in Israel. And a new species of bird has been discovered in the Borneo rainforest (it's rather nondescript, so I almost didn't include it, but I like the phrase "snacking on mistletoe").

Whales, articulated and dismantled 5/28/09 In this post, I linked to a time-lapse video of the installation of a humpback whale skeleton at the Museum of Osteology. Here is a time-lapse video of an army of ants reducing a lizard to bone.

Vultures 5/4/09 The house and lawn of a woman in Ridgeway, Virginia, have been besieged by a flock of 30-35 hostile vultures.

Bears in the news 4/24/09 A bear of mythical proportions is terrorizing the inhabitants of Incline Village, California. After a bear ravaged his plane in Alaska, a charter pilot patched it up with duct tape and plastic sheeting and flew it home.

Rediscovery of ancient Egypt 4/19/09 A massive statue of an Egyptian pharoah has been found in the Sudan - further south than any other.

Tree tales 4/14/09 There has been a trend on the coast of Poole, Dorset, U.K.: gouging the trunks of trees that block the view so that they will die.

Fossil fuels 3/25/09 Coal in Xuan Wei county of Yunnan province, China, has been linked to the area's highest incidence of cancer in non-smokers.

Snow ropes 1/27/09 In this post were snow photos taken by my brother-in-law in Seattle. Here is a photo my Uncle Chuck took recently in Illinois showing the Mississippi River frozen over. Here are some pictures of snow bales taken in Yeovil, Somerset, U.K., recently. Speaking of snow and ice, a Canadian man was forced to take down this great snow fort that he made for his kids.

First U.S. face transplant! 12/17/08 A Swedish teenager does not need a face transplant after a devastating skin disease (caution), because her own face grew back. Meanwhile, a woman from Belgium has a new windpipe - transplanted from a cadaver and first implanted in her arm to grow new blood vessels.

Fatal tiger mauling 10/28/08 A 66-year-old Canadian man who kept exotic cats has been mauled to death by his tiger.

Tree mummies

How could I resist a headline like this: Tree "Mummies" Found! On Wednesday, National Geographic revealed that Norwegian researchers have discovered 40 dead Scotch pines that date back to Viking times. This wouldn't be so surprising if they had petrified, but they simply didn't rot and the scientists don't know why. The trees lived for several hundred years, died natural deaths, and laid on the forest floor near a fjord on the rainy west coast of Norway.
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In yesterday's science news, plant biologists at the University of Vermont found that trees actually facilitate wildfires to prevent other trees from displacing them. "We used a mathematical model to show that positive feedback loops between fire frequency and savannah trees, alone or together with grasses, can stabilize ecological communities in a savannah state, blocking conversion of savannahs to forest." The longleaf pine and the Florida slash pine both engineer their own future by dropping needles that become fodder for fires that limit the spread of more trees.
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Speaking of engineering, scientists at the University of Washington have found that trees will power a small circuit. They plugged electrodes into a tree that generated the 10 nanowatts the device consumed. "Normal electronics are not going to run on the types of voltages and currents that we get out of a tree...[But] as new generations of technology come on-line, I think it's warranted to look back at what's doable or what's not doable in terms of a power source," says one of the researchers, although he admits that they haven't exactly established where these voltages come from.
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Glad to know that trees still hold some secrets...

Tree tales

An 18-year-old German hiker found a bone on the forest floor recently. This led to the discovery and recovery of a skeleton 11 meters up in a tree. In 1980, a 69-year-old retiree climbed the spruce, tied himself to it, and shot himself to death. There he remained for 29 years until his remains were found and identified by DNA and an artificial hip. Because the story did not have an associated photo, I have included this image of the "bicycle tree," located in Vashon Island, Washington.