Oct 16th, 2017: Cook Pines

[xoxoxoBruce]

The World is full of crooked trees, damn near as many as crooked politicians. Some from growing up in crowded conditions,
some twisted from damage, some bent by the prevailing wind … I guess those apply to both… and trees at the edge of forest
will lean out for more Sun. Cook pines originated at New Caledonia in the South Pacific about 20 degrees from the Equator,
but have been propagated all around the world.

Matt Ritter at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo was writing up a description of the Cook pine (Araucaria columnaris) for a book on the urban trees of California when he realised that the pines always leaned south. So he rang up a colleague in Australia to see if that was the case there. It turned out it was – but this time the pines leaned north.
“We got holy-smoked that there’s possibly a tree that’s leaning toward the equator wherever it grows,” says Ritter.
He and his colleagues studied 256 Cook pines scattered across five continents. They collected tree data at 18 locations between latitudes of 7 and 35° north, and 12 and 42° south. The team estimated that the trees tilt by 8.55 degrees on an average – about double the tilt of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
The trees also slant more the further they are from the equator in both hemispheres. “It’s a shockingly distinct pattern,” says Ritter. One tree in South Australia slants at 40 degrees.

Writing books you'll learn things and teach others. Think I'll write a book about sex, drugs, and rock&roll.

“The tilting phenomenon is not unusual,” says Steven Warren of the US Forest Service in Utah. In 2016, he reported that the inflorescence of the yucca palm found in the US always points south, thus cutting the cost of transporting nutrients to its flowers. Some cacti lean towards the sun too, he says. However, “this is the first time I have heard of a tree doing this”, says Warren.

link