Sunday, April 15, 2012

30 Days of Photographs II - Day 15


Wood


Trees are still made out of wood, right?

Before y'all start asking me what kind of tree that is, it doesn't matter.  The islands of the Bahamas are comprised of limestone, a form of calcium carbonate.  Basically, they're rocks.  Because of this, the depth of topsoil is relatively shallow, forcing the growth of trees to spread outward as shown.  

Some of the more mature trees will develop very intricate trunk bases with very lengthy root formations.  The one I was hoping to photograph for today's theme is presently covered in yard cuttings (I wasn't going to risk getting a centipede sting clearing it away) but I'll try to post a photo of it in the future.  It's a fig tree, one of the oldest and tallest trees in our yard and one of its roots extends to a length of approximately ... wait for it ... 42 feet.

Heh, heh.

(And just to satisfy those of you with inquiring minds, the tree in the photo is a Poinciana.  One of its empty seed pods can be seen at the bottom left and the tiny weed-like things seen between the roots at the upper left, centre and lower right of the picture are saplings of the same tree.)


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This is part of the 30 Days of Photographs II challenge, spawned by Ziva & BonyMike (a.k.a. MikeWJ). Please visit the others that are contributing to this lunacy:

Bryan (now appearing in an alternate reality on a different blog site)



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