Arboriculturalism

I've been strangely productive lately so please enjoy this extra treet...(sorry I couldn't resist).

As an environment volunteer in Nicaragua, I’ve been thinking a lot about trees. Not just about the need to plant more of them in order to protect streams, rivers, and watersheds, prevent erosion, and help reduce dangerous levels of carbon dioxide in the air, but also about the incredible variety of trees and plant life and the culture of the people that live among them. Needless to say, the culture surrounding trees in Nicaragua is different than in the United States. Trees mean many things to people here: shade, medicine, food, firewood, furniture, fence posts, animal feed…the list goes on.

For the last few months I’ve been drawing these trees poco a poco, working on them in quiet moments of repose…and now I’m finally finished! Since they seem to embody a lot of the significance of trees in Nicaragua, I thought I’d put ‘em up on the ‘ol blog and let the public devour them.

This is a real tree that I began drawing at Selva Negra in Matagalpa during my group’s In-Service Training in March 2011. It’s growing on a tiny island in the middle of a lake and at that time did not sport any leaves or flowers or fruit—but that didn’t stop it from being host to a myriad of other plant life. A great majority of trees in Nicaragua don’t just stand alone, but form the substrate for other organisms such as lichens, epiphytes, and fern species. These trees are truly ecosystems in and of themselves.

This tree was inspired by a grove that the bus passes on its long trek to Santa Lucia from the highway. The roots are exposed, yet they crush and crumble the rock in which they grow, and the branches are stretched out, pushed and pulled by the force of the prevailing wind. In the dry season when I started this drawing, most of the trees truly looked dead, but this is the great illusion of many plants in the summertime. It’s pretty amazing how trees can and will grow anywhere and with any conditions, even without water for 6 months and straight through a boulder.

This tree was inspired by the innumerable fence posts that line the roads of Santa Lucia. I’d say that the general fecundity of life in Nicaragua can be illustrated no better than with the image of the fence post tree. In order to make a fence post like this, all you need to do is find a branch from an existing tree, chop it off with your machete, and plant it about 6 inches in the ground. With some rain and sun a few weeks later it’ll start to sprout little branches and shoot out roots, and after a couple months it’ll be covered in leaves. Then you can begin chopping off the branches that grow off the top for more fence posts or even for firewood, and if you need a shady place for your cows to rest, just let the branches grow out!

I hope these images speak a little more deeply than would be possible using only words. The captions I put with them aren’t really meant to explain the drawings, but to just give them a little bit of context. If you have any questions or comments about trees or Nicaragua or drawings—or trees in Nicaragua—or drawings of trees—or drawings of trees in Nicaragua—please leave them for me, I’ll do my best to answer them!