Siamese Trees

[Gypo Logger]

I've cruised alot of timber and stomped alot of bush in my career, but I have never seen one tree wrap itself around another one 7 feet away.
How could this happen? I have seen natural grafting like this before, but not from so far apart. The trees are Sugar Maple and the one on the left is dead.
John

 

[Gypo Logger]

The more I think about it, the more I believe it was just a confused root, but trees don't grow that way do they. In other words, if you pound a nail in a tree when it's a sapling it will remain at the same height for the remainer of it's life.
Regardless, I'm stumped to figure this one out.
Any ideas?
John

 

[Kate Butler]

You're right, it's a strange one. I have a client who has a large maple and a smaller elm intertwined, but they're much closer together than the trees in your pictures.

Is the branch that becomes the smaller tree also dead?

Very interesting.

 

[Gypo Logger]

It looks like the smaller tree has died recently so I imagine that the appendage is at least alive at the trunk of the larger tree.
It makes me wonder if the arm would sprout green if I relieved it of the smaller tree.
There seems to be no sign of epicormic branching.
Here's a bigger picture to show how they are fused.
John
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v639/sunlover3/Special pictures/ST3.jpg

 

[Kate Butler]

It looks like the smaller tree has died recently so I imagine that the appendage is at least alive at the trunk of the larger tree.
It makes me wonder if the arm would sprout green if I relieved it of the smaller tree.
There seems to be no sign of epicormic branching.
Here's a bigger picture to show how they are fused.
John
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v639/sunlover3/Special pictures/ST3.jpg

If it's living, it might sprout even if you just nicked it without cutting the dead tree away. (Sort of like when you air-layer a woody plant.)

 

[Gypo Logger]

That makes sense Kate, but Spring is far away, however, should I do that now? Leaving the dead one there will give it support.
Explaining this one away may be like trying to rationalize what causes Burls, Birdseye or Tiger Stripe. It's just one of those things that eclipses any reasoning. Sorta like, "why are there 15,236,899,52 stars in the sky?" lol
John

 

[Kate Butler]

Burls, man, oh man...I have a client who has a bull spruce with more burls in it than I've ever seen before. Dozens. Big ones, little ones, some BIG 'UNS on the main trunk, lots of 1 footers on the lower limbs, and smaller ones farther up.

I'm going to get pictures of it next season.

I'd leave the dead one for support and try it next Spring.

 

[Gypo Logger]

It seems the link doesn't do the picture justice, so I will imbed the pic so we can see that the two trees are actually fused together as one and not merely wrapped around each other. I wonder if the DNA of each stem is itentical?
My appologies to those on dial up.
John

 

[Kate Butler]

Good question!

 

[Trignog]

I think the big one really likes the little one. Better put out an amber alert.

 

[Gypo Logger]

Burls are pretty wild too. I visited every bush crazed burl hunter in the Yukon this past summer and found a huge patch of my own near Mount Logan by Kluane Lake.
Here's some Spruce burls.
John

 

[Gypo Logger]

I never really thought about it until Trignog brought if up but maybe trees actually have sex like in the picture and give birth to all these burls.
That's right! The trees are pregnant. I'm a genius!
I didn't do it! Honest!
John

 

[Gypo Logger]

Speaking of oddball trees, here's a weird Cottonwood I took a picture of in the Yukon.
I call it the, "Cottonwoodman."
John

 

[Gypo Logger]

Speaking of Cottonwood, here's one I was sawing on in the Yukon. Note how dozey it is on the inside, but talk about heavy! That tree was like cement! It pinched my saw (372XP), so I ditched it, but all was well. I mean it's only a saw!
The burl you see was more valuable. Cottonwood burls are the most sought after. The screen you see in the foreground is my ATV . I had the camera sitting on the rear rack.
John

John

 

[Kate Butler]

Sometimes, you just gotta let it take the saw.

 

[Sheshovel]

Looks to me like that tree has been purposly grafted in that manner by a person years ago mabey to replace the big tree when it died.Years ago this was a common practice with sugar maples

 

[kf_tree]

i've seen that before but on branch's within the same tree.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

i've seen that before but on branch's within the same tree.

I've seen both, when small the friction prvents heavy bark growth, then when they become big enough to become static they graft or get engulfed, more like an included union.

That looks like a natural graft union, then the small, supressed tree gave up the ghost. This cause the tip of the branch to fail too. I would like to see how the fibers in the union mesh.

I've heard burls compared to warts, skin-tags and moles on skin. Some are caused by benign pathogens (like virus' and warts) others by internal meristematic mutations/errors that cause non-uniform growth (tags and moles).

Often the later will sprout tissue that becomes the funky cultivars we find in the high end nurseries. I've read that there is an increase of the occurance with sunspot activity.

 

[R Schra]

so whats this on an red beech tree. Its 450cm round at breast height. aproximly 200+years.

 

[CoreyTMorine]

Maybe the red beech top was grafted onto a european beech bottom 200 years ago, and the union kept producing those wierd cells. neat pics. thats sure some pretty country you get around in john.