Instead, I have been reading about trees.
Feb. 28th, 2012 08:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thanateI didn't read a lot of books last month (I was revising and painting and things) and I've actually finished sadly few this month, too, but this is because the stack of cool books I meant to read and silly books I've read bits of got usurped by Oliver Rackham's Woodlands. I'm not even to page 100 yet (of over 5 with notes & things) but it's not the sort of book you read in a couple days, either. Just the sort of book for which I abandon Throne of the Crescent Moon, which I've been looking forward to since September-or-so, in the TBR pile with a bookmark after chapter two. (Don't worry, I'll get back to it.)
I first ran into Oliver Rackham (er, figuratively) from that post on the occasionally-updated Medieval Worldbuilding Info livejournal that talks about his Ancient Woodland: Its History, Vegetation and Uses in England (which, I learned after getting it through interlibrary loan, has also got an updated edition, with extra notes & photo inserts!) and I think I talked a bit about that when I had it. This is the non-academic version: a lifetime of information from someone who has studied woods and trees, distilled for people who want to know things about them. I am learning stuff. It is very cool.
There's cultural stuff: before the advent of industrial age tools, forestry was mainly devoted to keeping trees down to a manageable size.
There are pollen core & archeology based estimates of what trees there were in England at what times in what places: Robin Hood would not have been able to hide in the deep woods. Neither could outlaws in Roman days, for that matter.
And there's fascinating stuff about tree biology:
"An anthropomorphic myth is that trees have a defined life-span and die of 'old age.' This may be true of some short-lived species. Most of the flowering cherries that were fashionable in the 1930s are now dead; birch and aspen seldom reach a century. However, in a civilized country, trees are normally felled before they get far into middle age and become too big to be easily handled. The public rarely sees an old tree of a long-lived species.
"Oaks are not immortal: they die at random from unknown causes... Life expectancy has little to do with age: if one must be anthropomorphic, the battlefield is a better analogy than the almshouse.
"Why are trees not immortal? Every year trees have to lay down a new annual ring all over their trunk, branches, twigs, and roots. Most trees reach their maximum leafage in late youth. Thereafter, taking good years with bad, the material available for making new wood is roughly constant, but it must be spread over an inexorably increasing area. Obviously this cannot go on forever."
--Oliver Rackham, Woodlands, p 38
I first ran into Oliver Rackham (er, figuratively) from that post on the occasionally-updated Medieval Worldbuilding Info livejournal that talks about his Ancient Woodland: Its History, Vegetation and Uses in England (which, I learned after getting it through interlibrary loan, has also got an updated edition, with extra notes & photo inserts!) and I think I talked a bit about that when I had it. This is the non-academic version: a lifetime of information from someone who has studied woods and trees, distilled for people who want to know things about them. I am learning stuff. It is very cool.
There's cultural stuff: before the advent of industrial age tools, forestry was mainly devoted to keeping trees down to a manageable size.
There are pollen core & archeology based estimates of what trees there were in England at what times in what places: Robin Hood would not have been able to hide in the deep woods. Neither could outlaws in Roman days, for that matter.
And there's fascinating stuff about tree biology:
"An anthropomorphic myth is that trees have a defined life-span and die of 'old age.' This may be true of some short-lived species. Most of the flowering cherries that were fashionable in the 1930s are now dead; birch and aspen seldom reach a century. However, in a civilized country, trees are normally felled before they get far into middle age and become too big to be easily handled. The public rarely sees an old tree of a long-lived species.
"Oaks are not immortal: they die at random from unknown causes... Life expectancy has little to do with age: if one must be anthropomorphic, the battlefield is a better analogy than the almshouse.
"Why are trees not immortal? Every year trees have to lay down a new annual ring all over their trunk, branches, twigs, and roots. Most trees reach their maximum leafage in late youth. Thereafter, taking good years with bad, the material available for making new wood is roughly constant, but it must be spread over an inexorably increasing area. Obviously this cannot go on forever."
--Oliver Rackham, Woodlands, p 38