Leaf scars have personality. No doubt about it. With a nice little bonnet, top hat, or beehive hair do to cap off a gnomish face, each monster marches a terrifying procession along the length of their twigs. These tiny monsters grin out at the unsuspecting world. And lo, a peripatetic naturalist pauses to discover their intricate world. Sam and I spent some time asking these trees what their names were and boy were we discovered. Each face is a leaf scar, the outline of where the stalk of a leaf connects to twig. The dots and features that give the face its facey-ness collectively form the vascular bundles, which are composed of xylem and phloem (imagine cutting a celery stalk in cross section).
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(Black locust) Marrowzodufia Blugly the Dwarf |
(Butternut) Pompuzador the bonnet keeper of spiggetiezi |
(Yellow birch) Joy Doom Happy Stacks |
(Cottonwood) Mark Buntly of the Broofing Haws |
(Common buckthorn) Ronald the Masked Parasitic Jubilee |
(Slippery elm) Squirky Bunkles |
(Staghorn sumac) Salwall Dimlar the Jay Slorper |
(Sugar maple) Starky Cusperbun |
(Lilac) Ralphez the woggly-eyed lime top |
(Black cherry) ZanKiffle Waffletragedy, aka ZK Waffles in the forests of Burlington |
(American beech) Qwayzar Dalooskie |
(Bitternut hickory) Ahab Dilbous-Bannister, Purveyor of Simple Fun |
(Quaking aspen) Emperor Mewslies of Nostralias |
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(Witch-hazel) Slippy Ghoul Grin aka Barbara Butterfields aka Babs Buttfiel |