The Lost Words

Written by Robert Macfarlane and illustrated by Jackie Morris, The Lost Words is a collection of words related to the natural world that are fading from our children’s minds as the “wild childhood” disappears from western society.

All over the country, there are words disappearing from children’s lives. These are the words of the natural world — Dandelion, Otter, Bramble and Acorn, all gone. The rich landscape of wild imagination and wild play is rapidly fading from our children’s minds.The Lost Words stands against the disappearance of wild childhood. It is a joyful celebration of nature words and the natural world they invoke.

• books
• Jackie Morris
• language
• Robert Macfarlane
• The Lost Words

The Shyness of Trees

From Robert Macfarlane’s fascinating Twitter account comes this new-to-me term: crown shyness, a phenomenon where the leaves and branches of individual trees don’t touch those of other trees, forming gaps in the canopy.

According to Wikipedia, there are several possible causes of this phenomenon, including the inhibition of the spread of organisms harmful to trees, damage or stunted growth of new shoots caused by the trees knocking into one another in the wind, or stunting of growth because of mutual shading. Whatever the cause, I think we can all agree that the effect looks hella rad. Photo by Dag Peak from Flickr.

See also wolf trees.

• Robert Macfarlane
• trees