Before the availability of forged metal, maple sap in sugaring operations was stored in mokuks, containers made of birch bark sewn together. Tribes would amass hundreds of these to use every season, and they were also used to store finished cake sugar, up to 100 pounds of it. [x]

Trees move water through their vascular tissue: a system of tubes that runs through the plant, analogous to the veins in the human body. There are two types of these tubes, xylem and phloem. The xylem moves water up the plant, from the roots to the leaves, and the phloem moves sugar-rich water down to feed the body of the plant. When you wound a tree, the sap is liquid leaking from the vascular system. [x]

Oak tree buds. [x]

Ulmus americana, the American elm, is native to Northern America. It is affected by Dutch elm disease, which is a fungi. It was first seen in the US in 1928, and it causes the branches to die back. Unable to gain nutrients from its leaves, the whole tree eventually dies.

Photo by ~RHS on DeviantArt.

An oak leaf. 

Happy New Year, lovely followers!

Thank you for an amazing year! Thank you for being so engaged and enthusiastic, and for being so kind when I make mistakes. Here’s to another year of learning and plants.

[Seen above, the needles of Sequoia sempervirens, the coastal redwood, my favorite tree.]

Claire 

The flowers of birch trees are called catkins. You may not recognize them as flowers, because they have small or non-existent petals. Their pollen is wind-dispersed, meaning it is carried by the wind, hopefully to another catkin which it can fertilize.

trees-stars-seas:

redw-o-o-d:

imcomingcolorado:

raggedglory:

leave the christmas trees in the forests, you cretins…

endlessme:

One Photo, 126 Frames, 2 Billion Leaves, 247 Feet

Cloaked in the snows of California’s Sierra Nevada, the 3,200-year-old giant sequoia called the President rises 247 feet. Two other sequoias have wider trunks, but none has a larger crown, say the scientists who climbed it. The figure at top seems taller than the other climbers because he’s standing forward on one of the great limbs.

I have this as a poster! It was in national geographic

nybg:

I really, really try not to post or reblog anything that requires more than three swipes on a magic mouse to scroll past, but c’mon: these trees. —MN

sosuperawesome:

7am, Joerg Marx