A Starling Murmuration Magically Makes the Shape of a Bird

in Nature | March 9th, 2021

“After months of chas­ing these birds around Lough Ennell, Co. West­meath [a lake in Ire­land], James Crom­bie and I cap­tured a unique dis­play, writes Col­in Hogg on YouTube. He’s refer­ring to the video above, which–for one ever-brief moment–captures a mur­mu­ra­tion of star­lings form­ing the shape of a giant bird. It’s a pret­ty meta con­cept.

Crom­bie also cap­tured the moment with a pho­to­graph that graced the cov­er of The Irish Times. View it here. The news­pa­per pro­vides some inter­est­ing back­sto­ry on the video and pho­to­graph here.

Find more mur­mu­ra­tion moments in the Relat­eds below.

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via Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Fal­con and the Mur­mu­ra­tion: Nature’s Aer­i­al Bat­tle Above Rome

A Stun­ning, Chance Encounter With Nature

Watch “The “Art of Fly­ing,” a Short Film Cap­tur­ing the Won­drous Mur­mu­ra­tions of the Com­mon Star­ling

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De-Stress with 30 Minutes of Relaxing Visuals from Director Hayao Miyazaki

in Animation, Nature, Psychology | February 22nd, 2021

What does it mean to describe some­thing as relax­ing?

Most of us would agree that a relax­ing thing is one that qui­ets both mind and body.

There’s sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence to sup­port the stress-reliev­ing, restora­tive effects of spend­ing time in nature.

Even go-go-go city slick­ers with a han­ker­ing for excite­ment and adven­ture tend to under­stand the con­cept of “relax­ing” as some­thing slow-paced and sur­prise-free.

HBO Max is tout­ing its col­lec­tion of ani­ma­tion mas­ter Hayao Miyaza­ki’s films with 30 Min­utes of Relax­ing Visu­als from Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, above.

Will all of us expe­ri­ence those 30 min­utes as “relax­ing”?

Maybe not.

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li fans may find them­selves gripped by a sort of triv­ia con­test com­pet­i­tive­ness, shout­ing the names of the films that sup­ply these pas­toral visions—Ponyo! Grave of the Fire­flies!! Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle!!! 

Fledg­ling ani­ma­tors may feel as if they’ve swal­lowed a stone—no mat­ter how hard I try, noth­ing I make will approach the beau­ty on dis­play here.

Sticklers—and there are plen­ty leav­ing com­ments on YouTube—may be irri­tat­ed to real­ize that it’s actu­al­ly not 30 but 6 min­utes of visu­als, looped 5 times.

Insom­ni­acs (such as this reporter) may wish there was more loop­ing and less con­tent. The select­ed scenery is tran­quil enough, but the clips them­selves are brief, lead­ing to some jar­ring tran­si­tions.

(One pos­si­ble workaround for those hop­ing to lull them­selves to sleep: fid­dle with the speed set­tings. Played at .25 and mut­ed, this com­pi­la­tion becomes very relax­ing, much like artist Dou­glas Gordon’s video instal­la­tion, 24 Hour Psy­cho. Leave the sound up and the lap­ping waves, gen­tle winds, and chuff­ing trains turn into some­thing wor­thy of a slash­er flick.

Final­ly, with so much atten­tion focussed on Mars these days, we can’t help imag­in­ing what alien life forms might make of these earth­ly visions—ahh, this green, sheep-dot­ted pas­ture does low­er my stress lev­el… wait, WTF was THAT!? Noth­ing on my home plan­et pre­pared me for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a mon­strous winged house com­prised of over­grown bag­pipes and chick­en legs lum­ber­ing through the coun­try­side!

We con­cede that 30 Min­utes of Relax­ing Visu­als from Stu­dio Ghi­b­li is a pleas­ant thing to have play­ing in the back­ground as we wait for COVID restric­tions to be lift­ed… but ulti­mate­ly, you may find these 36 min­utes of music from Stu­dio Ghi­b­li films more gen­uine­ly relax­ing.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Makes 1,178 Images Free to Down­load from My Neigh­bor Totoro, Spir­it­ed Away & Oth­er Beloved Ani­mat­ed Films

A Mag­i­cal Look Inside the Paint­ing Process of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Artist Kazuo Oga

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Puts Online 400 Images from Eight Clas­sic Films, and Lets You Down­load Them for Free

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Deadliest Garden in the World: Visit Alnwick’s Poison Garden in Northumberland, England

in Nature, Travel | January 19th, 2021

The mind reels to think of all the ear­ly humans who sac­ri­ficed them­selves, unwit­ting­ly, in the pre­his­toric quest to learn which plants were safe to eat, which were suit­able for heal­ing, and which would maim or kill who­ev­er who touched them. Even now, of course, the great major­i­ty of us rely on experts to make these dis­tinc­tions for us. Unless we’re steeped in field train­ing and/or folk knowl­edge, it’s safe to say most of us wouldn’t have a clue how to avoid poi­son­ing our­selves in the wild.

This need not over­ly con­cern us on a vis­it to The Poi­son Gar­den, how­ev­er. Nes­tled in man­i­cured lanes at Alnwick Gar­den, “one of north England’s most beau­ti­ful attrac­tions,” Natasha Geil­ing writes at Smith­son­ian, the Poi­son Gar­den includes such infa­mous killers as hem­lock, Atropa bel­ladon­na (a.k.a. Dead­ly Night­shade), and Strych­nos nux-vom­i­ca, the source of strych­nine, in its col­lec­tions. Just don’t touch the plants and you should be fine. Oh, and also, guides tell vis­i­tors, “don’t even smell them.” It should go with­out say­ing that tast­ing is out.

The Poi­son Gar­den is hard­ly the main attrac­tion at Alnwick, in Northum­ber­land. The cas­tle itself was used as the set­ting for Hog­warts in the first two Har­ry Pot­ter films. The 14 acres of con­tro­ver­sial mod­ern land­scape gardens–designed by the flam­boy­ant Jane Per­cy, Duchess of Northum­ber­land–have become famous in their own right, in part for vio­lat­ing “England’s archi­tec­tur­al pat­ri­mo­ny,” a scan­dal you can read about here. (One gar­den design­er and crit­ic called it a “pop­u­lar enter­tain­ment, the dream of a girl who looks like Posh and lives at Hog­warts.”)

The duchess responds to crit­i­cism of her extrav­a­gant designs with a shrug. “A lot of my ideas come from Las Vegas and Euro Dis­ney,” she admits. The Poi­son Gar­den has a much more ven­er­a­ble source, the Orto Botan­i­co in Pad­ua, the old­est extant aca­d­e­m­ic botan­i­cal gar­den, found­ed in 1545, with its own poi­son gar­den that dates to the time of the Medicis. After a vis­it, Per­cy “became enthralled with the idea of cre­at­ing a gar­den of plants that could kill instead of heal,” writes Geil­ing. She thought of it, specif­i­cal­ly, as “a way to inter­est chil­dren.” As the duchess says:

Chil­dren don’t care that aspirin comes from the bark of a tree. What’s real­ly inter­est­ing is to know how a plant kills you, and how the patient dies, and what you feel like before you die.

What child doesn’t won­der about such things? And if we teach kids how to avoid poi­so­nous plants, they can keep the rest of us alive should we have to retreat into the woods and become for­agers again. The Poi­son Gar­den also grows plants from which com­mon recre­ation­al drugs derive, like cannabis and cocaine, “as a jump­ing-off point for drug edu­ca­tion,” Geil­ing points out.

Pro­vid­ed vis­i­tors fol­low the rules, the gar­den is safe, “although some peo­ple still occa­sion­al­ly faint from inhal­ing tox­ic fumes,” Alnwick Garden’s web­site warns. And while it’s designed to attract and edu­cate kids, there’s a lit­tle some­thing for every­one. Percy’s favorite poi­so­nous plant, for exam­ple, Brug­man­sia, or angel’s trum­pet, acts as a pow­er­ful aphro­disi­ac before it kills. She explains with glee that “Vic­to­ri­an ladies would often keep a flower from the plant on their card tables and add small amounts of its pollen to their tea to incite an LSD-like trip.” You can learn many oth­er fas­ci­nat­ing facts about plants that kill, and do oth­er things, at Alnwick’s Poi­son Gar­den when the world opens up again.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Oliv­er Sacks Pro­motes the Heal­ing Pow­er of Gar­dens: They’re “More Pow­er­ful Than Any Med­ica­tion”

Denmark’s Utopi­an Gar­den City Built Entire­ly in Cir­cles: See Astound­ing Aer­i­al Views of Brønd­by Have­by

What Voltaire Meant When He Said That “We Must Cul­ti­vate Our Gar­den”: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Tune Into Tree.fm: An Online Radio Station That Streams the Soothing Sounds of Forests from Around the World

in Nature | December 23rd, 2020

Image by Snežana Tri­funović, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Walk into a for­est. Stand per­fect­ly still. Close your eyes. What do you hear? The sounds of birds, the rustling leaves, yes, yes…. But what’s that? And that? The for­est is full of sounds you can’t iden­ti­fy! Curi­ous sounds, far-away sounds, sooth­ing sounds, sounds that are not the churn­ing anx­ious wheels inside your head when you try to relax….

Expe­ri­enc­ing our­selves around trees has sev­er­al demon­stra­ble ben­e­fits, as the sci­ence of for­est bathing has taught us. Many of these have to do with visu­al, olfac­to­ry, and tac­tile plea­sures. But we must not neglect the nat­ur­al acoustic sys­tem all around us: an immer­sive expe­ri­ence in full 360-degree sound. Trees’ “vibra­to­ry ener­gies reveal humanity’s many con­nec­tions with forests,” writes David George Haskell at Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can.

Forests “are full of song.”

That’s all very well for peo­ple who can go out­side. But if you’re locked down in a major city, say, or the office, or an ill-advised hol­i­day gath­er­ing, and you feel cor­ti­sol lev­els ris­ing, we’ve got you cov­ered. Back in Sep­tem­ber, we fea­tured Sounds of the For­est, a crowd­sourced audio archive gath­er­ing sounds from forests all over the world. Now, these clips are stream­ing at Tree.fm, an online radio sta­tion for tree songs in stereo. 

Streams rill, frogs hoot, birds caw and squawk in cho­rus. And then there are the trees, each species pos­sessed of its own voice, Haskell writes:

Gusts of wind soni­fy plant diver­si­ty. Oak’s voice is coarse-grained, throaty; maple’s is sandy and light. These dif­fer­ences have their ori­gins in plant evo­lu­tion and adap­ta­tion. Drought-resis­tant oak leaves are thick­er, tougher than the water-hun­gry maple. The dif­fer­ent sounds of trees on a dry moun­tain ridge and in a moist forest­ed hol­low speak to the par­tic­u­lar­i­ties of the ecol­o­gy of each place. Pon­derosa pine sings sweet­ly in the winds of Cal­i­for­nia, its long nee­dles were, John Muir wrote, “finest music” and a “free, wing-like hum”. But in Col­orado, pines have evolved short­er, stiffer nee­dles to cope with heavy loads of snow and ice. There, the trees wail as their wiry nee­dles har­row the wind.

Tree.fm “is a tool that gives you instant access to the sounds of the world’s forests,” Beth Skwarec­ki writes at Life­hack­er. Many of those sounds, like the forests that pro­duced them, are endan­gered, not only from the usu­al sus­pects but also the noise pol­lu­tion of high­ways and hous­ing devel­op­ments. Lis­ten to for­est songs on repeat or hit “lis­ten to a ran­dom for­est” and be “trans­port­ed to Mada­gas­car to lis­ten to some lemurs, or to Ghana to hear some peace­ful­ly rush­ing water, or to Rus­sia, where a bird I’ve nev­er heard of puts on a vocal per­for­mance.” This is good med­i­cine. Dis­cov­er the for­est songs that best soothe your ner­vous sys­tem or delight ears at Tree.fm.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Sounds of the For­est: A Free Audio Archive Gath­ers the Sounds of Forests from All Over the World

Free: Down­load the Sub­lime Sights & Sounds of Yel­low­stone Nation­al Park

How to Find Silence in a Noisy World

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Marina Abramović’s Method for Overcoming Trauma: Go to a Park, Hug a Tree Tight, and Tell It Your Complaints for 15 Minutes

in Art, Life, Nature, Psychology | December 8th, 2020

One of the most renowned of Chi­nese poets, Du Fu, sur­vived the dev­as­tat­ing An Lushan rebel­lion that near­ly brought down the Tang Dynasty and result­ed in an incred­i­ble loss of life around the coun­try. His poems are full of grief, as trans­la­tor David Hin­ton notes. The open­ing of “Spring Land­scape” con­tains “pos­si­bly the most famous line in Chi­nese poet­ry,” and a painful com­ment on human­i­ty’s place in the nat­ur­al world.

The coun­try in ruins, rivers and moun­tains
con­tin­ue. The city grows lush with spring.

Blos­soms scat­ter tears for us, and all these
sep­a­ra­tions in a bird’s cry star­tle the heart.

The poem presents a trag­ic irony. Nature invites us in, seems to promise com­fort and refuge. “Du Fu tells us that birds seem to cry for us, and blos­soms weep,” writes Madeleine Thien at The New York Review of Books. But “of course, this is a fairy-tale view, and ‘in the knowl­edge of its fal­si­ty, heart­break­ing.’”

Is nature indif­fer­ent to human suf­fer­ing? It would seem so to the bro­ken-heart­ed Con­fu­cian poet. But nature is not devoid of fel­low feel­ing. Trees talk to each oth­er, cre­ate social worlds and fam­i­lies, and com­mu­ni­cate with the oth­er plants and ani­mals around them. Japan­ese researchers have shown that the oils trees secrete can mea­sur­ably low­er stress lev­els, reduce hos­til­i­ty and depres­sion, and boost immu­ni­ty. Trees may not weep, but they care.

Trees are also, says per­for­mance artist Mari­na Abramović in the short video above, “per­fect­ly silent listeners”—a rare and valu­able qual­i­ty in times of stress. “They have intel­li­gence. They have feel­ings.” And for this rea­son, a tree is the ide­al com­pan­ion when we need an ear.

You can com­plain to them. And I start­ed this a long time ago when I was in the Ama­zon with the native Indi­ans. You know, they will go to the Sequoia tree, which is one of the old­est on the plan­et. And they will make a dance for the tree. These dances for the tree are so incred­i­bly mov­ing an emo­tion­al. So I thought, Wow! Why don’t I cre­ate an exer­cise that real­ly works for me?

Abramović’s tree ther­a­py is one part of her “Abramović Method,” notes Paper, “a set of tech­niques that enables artists to get to high­er states of con­scious­ness.” She rec­om­mends it for any­one who’s reel­ing from the trau­mas of this year. In our own age of dev­as­ta­tion and iso­la­tion, it cer­tain­ly couldn’t hurt, and per­haps we know more than Du Fu did about how nature sup­ports our emo­tion­al lives.

So “please, go to the park near you,” the artist implores. “Pick the tree you like. Hold the tree tight. Real­ly tight. And just pour your heart into it. Com­plain to the tree for a min­i­mum of 15 min­utes. It’s the best heal­ing that you can do.” Includ­ed in the video is a tes­ti­mo­ni­al from an ex-rug­by play­er, who found the Com­plain­ing to Trees method trans­for­ma­tive. “There is some­thing in it,” he says. “It’s almost like you become part of the tree as well.” Trees are not peo­ple. They don’t dis­pense advice. They lis­ten and con­sole in their own mys­te­ri­ous­ly ancient, silent way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

The Secret Lan­guage of Trees: A Charm­ing Ani­mat­ed Les­son Explains How Trees Share Infor­ma­tion with Each Oth­er

The Social Lives of Trees: Sci­ence Reveals How Trees Mys­te­ri­ous­ly Talk to Each Oth­er, Work Togeth­er & Form Nur­tur­ing Fam­i­lies

How the Japan­ese Prac­tice of “For­est Bathing”—Or Just Hang­ing Out in the Woods—Can Low­er Stress Lev­els and Fight Dis­ease

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Why Humans Are Obsessed with Cats

in Biology, History, K-12, Life, Nature, Science | December 4th, 2020

A house cat is not real­ly a fur baby, but it is some­thing rather more remark­able: a tiny con­quis­ta­dor with the whole plan­et at its feet —Abi­gail Tuck­er

As part of its Annals of Obses­sion video series, The New York­er invit­ed sci­ence jour­nal­ist Abi­gail Tuck­er, author of The Lion in the Liv­ing Room, to reflect on “how felines took over the Inter­net, our homes, and our lives.”

It goes with­out say­ing that cats and humans have co-exist­ed for a very long time.

Most of us are acquaint­ed with the high regard in which Ancient Egyp­tians held Felis catus.

And we may know some­thing of their sea­far­ing his­to­ry, begin­ning with the Vikings and con­tin­u­ing on through Unsink­able Sam and oth­er cel­e­brat­ed ship’s cats.

An over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of us have spent the last decade or so glued to online exam­ples of their antics—rid­ing robot vac­u­ums, react­ing with ter­ror to cucum­bers, and pounc­ing on humans, some of whom have had the temer­i­ty to write and record voiceovers that sug­gest they have insight as to what goes on inside a cat’s hat. (As if!)

It’s grat­i­fy­ing to hear Tuck­er echo what cat lovers have long sus­pect­ed (and embla­zoned on t‑shirts, cof­fee mugs, and dec­o­ra­tive pillows)—the cats, not the own­ers, are the ones run­ning the show.

For­give us. Dogs have own­ers. Cats have staff.

Cats took a com­men­sal path to domes­ti­ca­tion, moti­vat­ed, then as now, by the food they knew to be stored in our set­tle­ments.

Tuck­er describes it as a series of cat con­trolled takeovers—a process of arti­fi­cial selec­tion, under­tak­en on the cats’ own ini­tia­tive:

House cats are supreme­ly adapt­able. They can live any­where and, while they must have plen­ty of pro­tein, they eat prac­ti­cal­ly any­thing that moves, from pel­i­cans to crick­ets, and many things that don’t, like hot dogs. (Some of their imper­iled feline rel­a­tives, by con­trast, are adapt­ed to hunt only a rare species of chin­chilla.) House cats can tweak their sleep­ing sched­ules and social lives. They can breed like crazy.

In cer­tain ways the house cat’s rise is trag­ic, for the same forces that favor them have destroyed many oth­er crea­tures. House cats are car­pet­bag­gers, arriv­istes, and they’re among the most trans­for­ma­tive invaders the world has ever seen—except for Homo sapi­ens, of course. It’s no coin­ci­dence that when they show up in ecosys­tems, lions and oth­er megafau­na are usu­al­ly on their way out.

Aloof as many of their num­ber may be, cats have engi­neered things in such a way as to be phys­i­cal­ly irre­sistible to most humans:

Their big heads and big eyes are so cute!

Their fur is so soft!

We can car­ry them around!

Dress them in doll clothes (some­times)!

Their cries mim­ic the cries of hun­gry human babies, and elic­it a sim­i­lar response from their human care­givers.

We may not love lit­ter box duty, but with 1 in 3 humans infect­ed by Tox­o­plas­ma gondii, we’ll like­ly be teth­ered to them for all eter­ni­ty.

For bet­ter or worse, we love them. And so do dog lovers. They just don’t know it yet.

But do not ever imag­ine that the feel­ing is rec­i­p­ro­cal.

They’re arch­car­ni­vores who can­not open their own cans. As Tuck­er wry­ly observes:

I think it’s fair to say that we are obsessed and they are not.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Preda­tor to Sofa Side­kick

GPS Track­ing Reveals the Secret Lives of Out­door Cats

In 1183, a Chi­nese Poet Describes Being Domes­ti­cat­ed by His Own Cats

How Humans Domes­ti­cat­ed Cats (Twice)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She loves cats, but most recent­ly appeared as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Meticulous, Elegant Illustrations of the Nature Observed in England’s Countryside

in Art, Books, Nature | November 5th, 2020

If you hap­pen to have grown up in the Eng­lish coun­try­side, you prob­a­bly retain a cer­tain sen­si­tiv­i­ty to and affin­i­ty for nature. This can express itself in any num­ber of ways, most often by a com­pul­sion to gar­den, no mat­ter how urban the set­ting in which you now live. But Jo Brown has shown how to base a career on it: an artist and illus­tra­tor — and “bird­er wildlif­er mush­roomer,” accord­ing to her Twit­ter bio — she has long kept a “nature jour­nal” doc­u­ment­ing the flo­ra and fau­na encoun­tered in the coun­try­side around her home in Devon.

“At the end of April 2019, Jo post­ed a video of her jour­nal so far on Twit­ter,” says her web site. “It went viral and her fol­low­ers jumped from 9K fol­low­ers to 20K fol­low­ers in two days.” A glance at any giv­en page reveals what so impressed them. “Each page of Brown’s note­book con­tains a pen and col­ored pen­cil draw­ing that begins at the pages’ edges, appear­ing to grow from the cor­ner or across the paper,” writes Colos­sal’s Grace Ebert.

“Some­times cap­tured through close-ups that mim­ic sci­en­tif­ic illus­tra­tions, the del­i­cate ren­der­ings depict the detail of a buff-tailed bumblebee’s fuzzy tor­so and the red ten­drils of a round-leaved sun­dew. Brown notes the com­mon and Latin names for each species and com­mon char­ac­ter­is­tics, in addi­tion to where and when she spot­ted it.”

In oth­er words, the nature jour­nal show­cas­es at once its cre­ator’s keen eye, well-trained hand, and for­mi­da­ble knowl­edge of the nat­ur­al world. It also stands as a prime exam­ple of the art of note­book­ing.

 

Using to its fullest advan­tage her ruled Mole­sk­ine note­book (the brand of choice for those invest­ed in doing their jot­ting and sketch­ing on the go for a cou­ple of decades now), Brown effec­tive­ly deliv­ers a mas­ter class in the vivid, leg­i­ble, and ele­gant — dare we say organ­ic? — orga­ni­za­tion of both visu­al and tex­tu­al infor­ma­tion in the space of a small page.

You can take a clos­er look at how she does it on her web site as well as her feeds on both Twit­ter and Insta­gram. More recent­ly, her jour­nal has been pub­lished in book form as Secrets of a Devon Wood. Few nature-lovers, per­haps, can equal Jo Brown as an artist, but every­one can enjoy the glo­ri­ous­ly var­ied realm of life that sur­rounds them just as much as she does. “All that’s required,” she says, “is a lit­tle patience and qui­et obser­va­tion.”

via Kot­tke/Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Two Mil­lion Won­drous Nature Illus­tra­tions Put Online by The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library

The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library Makes 150,000 High-Res Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al World Free to Down­load

Ernst Haeckel’s Sub­lime Draw­ings of Flo­ra and Fau­na: The Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Draw­ings That Influ­enced Europe’s Art Nou­veau Move­ment (1889)

New Study: Immers­ing Your­self in Art, Music & Nature Might Reduce Inflam­ma­tion & Increase Life Expectan­cy

Japan­ese Artist Has Drawn Every Meal He’s Eat­en for 32 Years: Behold the Deli­cious Illus­tra­tions of Itsuo Kobayashi

The Sketch­book Project Presents Online 24,000 Sketch­books, Cre­at­ed by Artists from 135 Coun­tries

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Daisugi, the 600-Year-Old Japanese Technique of Growing Trees Out of Other Trees, Creating Perfectly Straight Lumber

in Architecture, History, Nature | October 23rd, 2020

Image by Wrath of Gnon

We’ve all admired the ele­gance of Japan’s tra­di­tion­al styles of archi­tec­ture. Their devel­op­ment required the kind of ded­i­cat­ed crafts­man­ship that takes gen­er­a­tions to cul­ti­vate — but also, more prac­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, no small amount of wood. By the 15th cen­tu­ry, Japan already faced a short­age of seedlings, as well as land on which to prop­er­ly cul­ti­vate the trees in the first place. Neces­si­ty being the moth­er of inven­tion, this led to the cre­ation of an inge­nious solu­tion: daisu­gi, the grow­ing of addi­tion­al trees, in effect, out of exist­ing trees — cre­at­ing, in oth­er words, a kind of giant bon­sai.

“Writ­ten as 台杉 and lit­er­al­ly mean­ing plat­form cedar, the tech­nique result­ed in a tree that resem­bled an open palm with mul­ti­ple trees grow­ing out if it, per­fect­ly ver­ti­cal,” writes Spoon and Tam­ago’s John­ny Wald­man. “Done right, the tech­nique can pre­vent defor­esta­tion and result in per­fect­ly round and straight tim­ber known as taru­ki, which are used in the roofs of Japan­ese tea­hous­es.”

These tea­hous­es are still promi­nent in Kyoto, a city still known for its tra­di­tion­al cul­tur­al her­itage, and not coin­ci­den­tal­ly where daisu­gi first devel­oped. “It’s said that it was Kyoto’s pre­em­i­nent tea mas­ter, Sen-no-rikyu, who demand­ed per­fec­tion in the Kitaya­ma cedar dur­ing the 16th cen­tu­ry,” writes My Mod­ern Met’s Jes­si­ca Stew­art.

At the time “a form of very straight and styl­ized sukiya-zukuri archi­tec­ture was high fash­ion, but there sim­ply weren’t near­ly enough raw mate­ri­als to build these homes for every noble or samu­rai who want­ed one,” says a thread by Twit­ter account Wrath of Gnon, which includes these and oth­er pho­tos of daisu­gi in action. “Hence this clever solu­tion of using bon­sai tech­niques on trees.” Aes­thet­ics aside — as far aside as they ever get in Japan, at any rate — “the lum­ber pro­duced in this method is 140% as flex­i­ble as stan­dard cedar and 200% as dense/strong,” mak­ing it “absolute­ly per­fect for rafters and roof tim­ber.” And not only is daisu­gi’s prod­uct straight, slen­der, and typhoon-resis­tant, it’s mar­veled at around the world 600 years lat­er. Of how many forestry tech­niques can we say the same?

via Spoon and Tam­a­go

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art & Phi­los­o­phy of Bon­sai

This 392-Year-Old Bon­sai Tree Sur­vived the Hiroshi­ma Atom­ic Blast & Still Flour­ish­es Today: The Pow­er of Resilience

The Philo­soph­i­cal Appre­ci­a­tion of Rocks in Chi­na & Japan: A Short Intro­duc­tion to an Ancient Tra­di­tion

The Secret Lan­guage of Trees: A Charm­ing Ani­mat­ed Les­son Explains How Trees Share Infor­ma­tion with Each Oth­er

The Social Lives of Trees: Sci­ence Reveals How Trees Mys­te­ri­ous­ly Talk to Each Oth­er, Work Togeth­er & Form Nur­tur­ing Fam­i­lies

A Dig­i­tal Ani­ma­tion Com­pares the Size of Trees: From the 3‑Inch Bon­sai, to the 300-Foot Sequoia

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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