I hope you enjoyed our incredible journey inside the tree. There are many more, deeper ones to take. When I was a kid, there was a TV show where a group of people lived in a spaceship/submarine—not sure which—and traveled inside the human body. The ship was very small… that’s about all I remember. I hope our journey has been similar as far as getting inside a tree. We haven’t been everywhere or seen everything, but it’s a good start.
I don’t think that we can really relate to trees until we have a basic understanding of their bodies, like we do of our own. For many people, their experience is surface only, not knowing what’s inside. This could be said for most tree workers and arborists—years ago including myself. I remember clearly my knowledge quit at the outer edge of the bark, with no idea of what was inside. My experience then was only visual, just the look. We chop away at the surface, not really knowing how what we do affects the inner life of the tree. If you love trees, you will be curious; when you start to answer your questions then you are moving along well.
There is another major part to tree knowledge and tree work, and that is the hands-on practices from planting to removal. I have dealt extensively with selection, planting, pruning, insects, diseases and other problems in my first book, Your Trees: What They Want You to Know. That book makes a good companion to this current writing. Much of the information it contains is on my website in different forms. The Articles section is getting plump and will shortly contain about 190 of my essays about trees. PLease enjoy! I do this for you and your trees.
I would like to thank Jim Grusendorf of Keen Mouse Productions Inc., friend, AI artist, and web wizard through the years. Without his help with this project, it would not exist.
