Naming trees

Moss suggested we should share more experiences, so here's one.

Since I'm usually climbing by myself, I get to name a lot of trees, if a name suggests itself, and they usually end up with masculine names like Lancelot, Old Scratchy, Gramps, and Nameless. Even when Dunlap joins me and names the tree, it's "Little Joe" "Adam" or "Hopsing" (get it? - TV's Bonanza, the Ponderosa Ranch?). But a recent christening is making me reevaluate my naming bias.

I do a series of facilitated climbs for the Girl Scouts. We use a ponderosa in the mountains about halfway between Denver and Colorado Springs.

After cleaning and prepping, I next climbed this tree with the camp director, and she named it "Delilah." I immediately realized that the name fit perfectly with this graceful and lovely tree. Not only do I believe that the tree has taken the name to heart, but she has dressed up for the occasion.

Working by myself and having the first climbs scheduled for 9am (over an hour's drive from where I live), I decided to leave tag lines in the tree (pulled up and out of reach of campers), so that I could easily set my ropes on subsequent dates. But I didn't have enough line with me. So the director brought me a spool of hot pink parachute cord.

Now when leaving in the evening and arriving on another morning, I am greeted with the sight of this fine tree adorned with 12 hot pink streamers (6 doubled lines). Between climbs, pink Delilah is visible to all the girls using the camp trails.

And perhaps I'm anthropomorphizing, but I really think Delilah likes it. Now that she's all clean and deadwooded, she's out on the town in her hot pink duds. At least until next Tuesday, when our final climbs of the season return Delilah to her plain, but still lovely, finery.

Harv and I chatted about Delilah. The first thing that came to my mind was of a woman who took away all of a man's power...with a sharp cutting tooll!

My mind works in odd ways sometimes. the next place it went to was the cutting of climbing ropes. Time to stop the car, back up, and take another road The one I'm on isn't going where I want it to.

Tom

Nice post Ponderosa. It's an interesting problem determining a masculine or feminine identity when naming a tree.

For some species it can be narrowed anatomically. I already knew that ginkos and hollys are either male or female. I did a little research to find out more. Species that have either male or female (but not both) flowers on individual trees are called dioecious. Most tree species are monoecious, they have both male and female flowers on the same tree.

Here are a few dioecious species:
American Holly
Black Willow
Eastern Cottonwood
Eastern Red Cedar
Red Mullberry (can be monoecious)
Osage Orange
White Ash

To make things confusing there are species (like maples) that can be dioecious or monoecious. Or can be female one year and male the next. Or have branches that are female or male on one tree. Some species will have female flowers at the top and male flowers in the lower canopy.

This web site is an excellent source of detailed info on North American tree species:
Silvics of North America

-moss