On our hike at Wesley Preserve this Sunday, we hiked through an area that is an emerging forest.  The first sawmill in Frost Town was built in 1790 just a mile south of the Wesley Hill Preserve along Gulick Rd.  By 1880 three mills were operating, but by 1926 when three artists bought land within the area now encompassed by the Wesley Hill Preserver, the mills and the town had closed for lack of trees and good farm land and the trees were beginning to recover.  One tree in particular stood out.  As I caught up, Wendy and Norm were investigating the tree and the best angle for a picture.  Norm was seeing the shapes and the light in the tree, Wendy was looking through to tree for interesting images framed by the tree. What I saw was two stems that had grown back together in two places.  This last occurrence is called inosculation if the joining is a true graft, or conjoining if the joint remains two separate branches. You also may notice the size of this tree compared to those in the background.  This tree must have escaped the sawmill and grew up in the open field.  I hope to get a copy of Wendy’s and Norm’s pictures of this same tree so we can compare but meanwhile, compare to a second old oak tree a bit lower down on the preserve.

If you want to investigate further, simply Google Hugging trees or Trees grow together.  Sometimes people work hard to help.  Sometimes it simply occurs naturally.