Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/10/08/watch-tree-topples-in-hurrica.html
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So it did make a sound.
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But there was someone there to hear it.
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The shallowness of the root system is incredible… Is that because of the swampy terrain or is there just a flat concrete desk underneath the sprinkling of soil?
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And remember, you should never use vertical video, even when filming highly vertical things like trees, giraffes and supermodels, because YouTube is too stupid to respect the framing format.
Instead, you should film only a squat horizontal strip of your subject and ignore the basics of composition.
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I gotta admit, since I’m reading on my phone now I was delighted that the post included a portrait-aspect GIF that filled my screen beautifully.
Score a point for Florida, for once.
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Still, tho…
@8080256256, I’d guess it’s the swampiness contributes to the shallowness of the root system. Florida has a fair amount of sea level terrain across the whole state and the north on the Atlantic indeed is part of the Okefenokee swamp system that straddles the border down there (which is further inland, kind of, though):
But then again, I don’t see where this happened, so could just be general shallowness… ?
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What has this country come to when people are watching topless trees and joking about it on teh innarwebs? What ever happened to modest trees?
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Sigh.
Guess I should give up on Florida and go do the sensible thing, like build a home in the hills of an arid ecosystem prone to brush fires. Who’d build their house surrounded by kindling in fire country, where there’s fires, amirite?
No, that’s no good. Maybe I should go build on dredged up fill on a fault line, that’s a better idea.
Some of our trees really do have roots.
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Critter’s waking up the triffids! Run!
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All our ents keep triffids as pets, what do yours do?
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standing in front of a large glass window to film a tree toppling in a hurricane ✓
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there was already 3 to 6 inches of water in the hole by the time the roots were out. saturated ground.
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Also an aquifer that’s so very close to the surface in some areas. Sinkholes abound.
My mother has been buried outside Gainesville near Paynes Prairie for about 47 years, and I’m surprised her grave hasn’t been shifted or disturbed in all this time.
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I’m guessing that the ground is wet enough that the roots never need to go deep for water.
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The soil may be anoxic, or nearly so, below six inches.
Cypress knees are snorkels for the roots. Other trees can’t have deep roots, because they must breathe
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This actually pretty typical. The sterotypical picture with very deep tree roots is not really correct. Most available nutrients are in the top few feet so most trees will have most of their roots there. See this Forresty Commision Guide which shows most trees have roots less that 2m deep and only a few have roots going down to 4m.
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Two meters I can easily accept. I’ve seen quite a number of toppled trees. But this is something like 20 cm.
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