I always assume that other people share all of the random, miscellaneous crap that I have rolling around in my head and I'm surprised when they don't. I was reminded of this recently so I thought I would take a moment and share something with those of you who don't know how this happens...
That's barbed wire running through the middle of a living tree in a fence row. A Hackberry Tree, to be precise. In my part of the country you see lots of tree lined fence rows comprised mainly of hackberry trees, juniper trees, and bois d' arc trees. A friend of mine commented the other day wondering why farmers/ranchers would bother to plant trees all along the fence rows like that.
They aren't planted there intentionally, of course. All three of those trees produce seeds/fruit that are favored by birds. The birds eat the fruit. The seeds pass through their innards and are pooped out by the birds while they sit on the fence wire. The seed germinates in the ground under the fence and grows up in or very near the fence as a sapling that doesn't get mowed down or cultivated under by the farmer because its protected by the fence.
So, you eventually get a whole row of trees growing up right along a fence row getting bigger and bigger while the fence ages. Over time, the original fence posts rot (if they are wood) or rust out (if they are steel) and the farmer/rancher needs to replace them.
Nailing wire to the convenient row of trees that now mark the fence line is often the most expedient method of repairing the fence. These trees grow very quickly, as trees go, and they can grow right around the barbed wire where it is nailed to them until they completely engulf it.
This is the type of high-quality programming you get here at The Reluctant Paladin when its so friggin' hot every day your brain wants to melt out your ears :)
7 comments:
That's pretty smart though. It's a 'crappy' fence.. lol... (and I never would have thought of any of that in a million years!)
Neat!
When I was a kid we had a giant silver poplar that had a large rope tied to a limb that we used to swing on. The rope had been there so long that the limb had completely engulfed it, and the rope looked like it was growing out of the bottom of the limb.
I agree with these other comments. I stare at things and wonder why they are the way they are all the time - especially those bikes that were left in the woods and had trees grow around them.
Cool to see this in different stages. I've seen the barbed wire with the trees grown around it but never stopped to think about the whole process.
The infamous hedgerow country in Normandy though which the Allies had so much trouble fighting was composed entirely of vegetation and would literally stop a tank never mind a stray cow.
Locomotive Breath - I just finished reading "Band of Brothers", and I was thinking the same thing.
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