Figure 1: The Power of Three. Having experimented with
various ways to illustrate changes over time in the trees
that are the subject of my photography, I have come back
to what is a well-known rhetorical principle: the power of
three. Essentially, triptychs are the often the best way to
concisely show a progressive change in a tree, as three
images give the viewer a direction of travel and a story
(start, middle, and end)—and just enough complication
to enjoy comparing and contrasting the three images.
In this triptych, one side of a fork in a young red oak (Quercus
rubra) was snapped off by a vehicle, and the images tell the
story of its recovery through the development of associated
woundwood. If you look closely, the woundwood received
more minor damage as it developed, leaving a small
smudge of a different color on the woundwood's surface.
Figure 2: Out of The Frying Pan and into the Fire. This shows
the occlusion of a basal wound on a semi-mature European
ash (Fraxinus excelsior) as a triptych of sequential images. The
initial wound was very large—running around about two-thirds
of the stem's circumference. It was inflicted by some sheep
that were unwisely fenced into a small wooded area at my
College, where the sheep damaged all the trees that were in
that temporary enclosure. The speed of this unlikely recovery
shows just how much "lust for life" a young tree can have.
Unfortunately, for this specimen, it is starting to suffer from
ash dieback disease (causal agent: Hymenoscyphus fraxineus),
so all that effort may come to naught. Or perhaps not:
currently, our government agencies advise that ash trees
showing only minor symptoms of this disease are to be kept,
as these are the trees that may be used to breed resistance
into a new generation of ash trees. Either way, this tree is
having to battle through a second crisis in its young life.
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