If we hadn’t our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit the weather with one feature which compensates for all its bullying vagaries – the ice storm: when a leafless tree is clothed with ice from the bottom to the top – ice that is as bright and clear as crystal; when every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dew-drops, and the whole tree sparkles cold and white, like the Shah of Persia’s diamond plume. Then the wind waves the branches and the sun comes out and turns all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms that glow and burn and flash with all manner of colored fires, which change and change again with inconceivable rapidity from blue to red, from red to green, and green to gold – the tree becomes a spraying fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or nature, of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable magnificence. One cannot make the words too strong. Mark Twain
I thought all the trees were whispering to each other, passing news and plots along in an unintelligible language; and the branches swayed and groped without any wind. They do say the trees do actually move, and can surround strangers and hem them. J R R Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
He’d grown unused to woods like this. He’d become accustomed to the Northwest, evergreen and shaded dark. Here he was surrounded by soft leaves, not needles; leaves that carried their deaths secretly inside them, that already heard the whispers of Autumn. Roots and branches that knew things. Michael Montoure, Slices
Let us learn to appreciate there will be times when the trees will be bare, and look forward to the time when we may pick the fruit. Anton Chekhov
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees. William Blake
I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall,
I’ll never see a tree at all. Ogden Nash, Song of the Open Road, 1933
It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanates from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit. Robert Louis Stevenson, Forest Notes
Each tree
Laden with fairest fruit, that hung to th’ eye
Tempting, stirr’d in me sudden appetite
To pluck and eat. John Milton, Paradise Lost VIII:30
The tree I had in the garden as a child, my beech tree, I used to climb up there and spend hours. I took my homework up there, my books, I went up there if I was sad, and it just felt very good to be up there among the green leaves and the birds and the sky. Jane Goodall
One tree is an icon of the British countryside ... We want to understand this species as never before ... We will investigate how our oak managed to survive through four very different seasons. George McGavin, Oak Tree: Nature’s Greatest Survivor, BBC 2015
It even has its own form of language. ibid.
It’s almost four hundred years old. ibid.
Oak is an incredible building material, but even today we have yet to come anywhere close to creating structures with the economy and beauty of the oak tree in its natural form. ibid.
And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer. F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Eventually, there were hundreds of billions of trees entombed in the Earth … Those trees had turned into immense deposits of coal. Neil deGrasse Tyson, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey: Lost Worlds of Planet Earth IX, Fox 2014
And the pattern of wide and narrow rings in any one region, caused by a particular trademark sequence of good years and bad years is significantly characteristic – a fingerprint that labels the exact years in which the rings were laid down – to be recognizable from tree to tree. Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth pp88-89
New England – home to the most colourful forest in America stretching across six states from Maine in the north to Connecticut in the South. Every year millions of people flock here to witness one of the planet’s greatest spectacles. Earth’s Greatest Spectacles I: New England, BBC 2016
Pohutukawa tree – a miracle of life from almost nothing … Pohutukawa trees can live for more than a thousand years. New Zealand: Earth’s Mythical Islands I, BBC 2016
Episode 12B: How to recognise different types of trees from quite a long way away. No 1: The Larch. Monty Python’s Flying Circus s1e3, BBC 1969
… He cuts down trees, he skips and jumps
He like to press wild flowers.
He puts on women’s clothing
And hangs around in bars!? … Monty Python s1e9, The Lumberjack Song
They live, breathe and even communicate. Judi Dench: My Passion for Trees, BBC 2017
There are more trees on the planet than there are stars in our galaxy. ibid.
The Yew is 140 million years old. ibid.
I’ve heard the rush of water surging up under the bark. ibid.
And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. Genesis 2:8-10
And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. Genesis 2:15-17
And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter: therefore the name of it was called Marah.
And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink?
And he cried unto the Lord; and the Lord shewed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet: there he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them. Exodus 15:23-25
Observe and see how (in the winter) all the trees seem as though they had withered and shed all their leaves, except fourteen trees, which do not lose their foliage but retain the old foliage from two to three years till the new comes. Book of Enoch 1:3:1
And he said unto me: ‘Enoch, why dost thou ask me regarding the fragrance of the tree, and why dost thou wish to learn the truth?’ Then I answered him saying: ‘I wish to know about everything, but especially about this tree.’ And he answered saying: ‘This high mountain which thou hast seen, whose summit is like the throne of God, is His throne, where the Holy Great One, the Lord of Glory, the Eternal King, will sit, when He shall come down to visit the earth with goodness. And as for this fragrant tree no mortal is permitted to touch it till the great judgement, when He shall take vengeance on all and bring (everything) to its consummation for ever. It shall then be given to the righteous and holy. Its fruit shall be for food to the elect: it shall be transplanted to the holy place, to the temple of the Lord, the Eternal King.’ Enoch 1:25:1-5
And there I saw aromatic trees exhaling the fragrance of frankincense and myrrh, and the trees also were similar to the almond tree. Enoch 1:29:2
And beyond these, I went afar to the east, and I saw another place, a valley (full) of water. And therein there was a tree, the colour (?) of fragrant trees such as the mastic. And on the sides of those valleys I saw fragrant cinnamon. And beyond these I proceeded to the east. Enoch 1:30:1-3
And I saw other mountains, and amongst them were groves of trees, and there flowed forth from them nectar, which is named sarara and galbanum. And beyond these mountains I saw another mountain to the east of the ends of the earth, whereon were aloe-trees, and all the trees were full of stacte, being like almond-trees. And when one burnt it, it smelt sweeter than any fragrant odour. Enoch 1:31:1-3