Trees appear to grow regularly because the sky and diffusion of light are commonly regular.

February 12. 

Saturday. 

You may account for that ash by the Rock having such a balanced and regular outline by the fact that in an open place their branches are equally drawn toward the light on all sides, and not because of a mutual understanding through the trunk. 

• For there is Cheney’s abele, which stands just south of a large elm. It grows wholly southward, and in form is just half a tree.

• So with the tupelos under the Hill shore, east of Fair Haven Pond. They terminate abruptly like a bull’s horn, having no upward leading shoot, and bend off over the water, — are singularly one-sided. 

In short, trees appear to grow regularly because the sky and diffusion of light are commonly regular. 

There is a peculiarly drooping elm at George Prescott’s great gate just north of his house, very different from the common or upright stiff-branched ones near by it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 12, 1859

You may account for that ash by the Rock having such a balanced and regular outline by the fact that in an open place their branches are equally drawn toward the light on all sides, and not because of a mutual understanding through the trunk. Trees appear to grow regularly because the sky and diffusion of light are commonly regular. See September 25, 1857 ("As I came round the island, I took notice of that little ash tree on the opposite shore. It has been cut or broken off about two feet from the ground, and seven small branches have shot up from its circumference, all together forming a perfectly regular oval head about twenty-five feet high and very beautiful. With what harmony they work and carry out the idea of the tree, one twig not straying farther on this side than its fellow on that! That the tree thus has its idea to be lived up to, and, as it were, fills an invisible mould in the air, is the more evident, because if you should cut away one or all but one, the remaining branch or branches would still in time form a head in the main similar to this")

The tupelos under the Hill shore, east of Fair Haven Pond terminate abruptly like a bull’s horn. See June 30, 1856 ("By the roadside, Long Plain, North Fairhaven, observed a tupelo seven feet high with a rounded top, shaped like an umbrella, eight feet diameter . . .") and note to September 7, 1857 ("Measured that large tupelo behind Merriam's, which now is covered with green fruit, and its leaves begin to redden. It is about thirty feet high, with a round head and equally broad near the ground.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 12

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2023