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Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods

Book by Lyndsie Bourgon · 2 quotes · Trees, Poaching, Redwoods

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Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods Quotes

“The oldest coastal redwood to have its rings counted was 2,200 years old. A bit of its stump, which was growing when Hannibal took his elephants over the Alps, is preserved in Richardson Grove. But trees just as old - already ancient when philosophers in Greece and Rome dubbed them hulae and materia, or the matter of life - still fill Himboldt’s forests. Indeed, Redwood trees left I disturbed are virtually immortal: when fire touches a redwood trunk, its bark uses the chemical compound tannin to shield the tree from the flames. Some redwood bark, fluted in long, deep crevices that splinter and meander off, has been measured at two feet thick. Redwoods owe their longevity to their ability to sprout new trees from the trunks and roots of older specimens- making them not so different, really, from human children and parents.”

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“Scientists have stumbled on the remains of ancient woods in this way, locating root systems that continue to support the forest long after the body of the tree has disappeared. In this sense the tree’s influence extends beyond the scope of its body; it remains an ancestor. The trees that once towered here on Yurok land continue to inform the actions and reactions of trees in front of us today.”

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Book:Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods
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