Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 34 mm — 1/250 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Spooky Tree
Finally getting around to writing one of the posts I mentioned in Overwhelmed: an Embarrassment of Riches, here's the “spooky tree” that our guide, Hirozou-san, showed us tucked away in a far corner of the small and sparsely populated Kakeroma-jima Island of southern Japan's Amami Island Group in the East China Sea. We visited Amami over the New-Year holiday.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — 1/60 sec, f/7.1, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Cluster of Roots Dangling Down
The whole tree seems to be made up of nothing but twisty tangled clumps of aerial roots that drop down to establish new trunks. As time progresses, they get sturdier and become trunks, branching out to start the process again, thus expanding the tree's coverage.
It creates a decidedly haunted-story feeling, both similar and different from the spooky Amami mangroves we would see the next day.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — 1/180 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Creepy
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — 1/200 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Self-Extending Support
Maybe this “expanding coverage” is where Japanese gardeners got the idea for adding supports to tree branches in order to allow them to grow to unnatural lengths, as we've seen many times in passing on this blog (recently here and here).
At some point it becomes difficult to tell whether to consider something a dangling root, or a trunk in its own right...
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — 1/60 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Trunk/Root/Stem of Some Sort
The sides of the trunks had so many roots glommed onto them that they appeared more like the plumbing on a space-shuttle engine than a tree.
Someone had strung a net up among the roots/trunks (at some point it's hard to tell the difference) to make a hammock, which we took turns bouncing in...
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — 1/200 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
There was also a long rope for swinging on...
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — 1/200 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 32 mm — 1/125 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
It was right on the ocean, so the view was nice...
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 23 mm — 1/125 sec, f/9, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
View from the Tree
We were there late in the afternoon on a fairly blustery, cloudy day, but before we left we got some of the last rays of the sun peeking through, which made for nice color (that sadly probably doesn't come through unless you're viewing with a color-managed browser on a nice display)...
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 18 mm — 1/160 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Spooky, In Warm Tones
Two minutes later, I snapped the sunset picture seen here.
More Amami-related posts are listed in my blog's Amami-Islands Category.
Fascinating tree form. Hope Peter or someone can identify what type of tree it is and if it would grow anywhere. I’d love to try one here in Ohio, but heaven only knows
how long it would take to become that interesting. Or if, with judicious pruning, one could achieve some room-type structures. Could be fun.
Isn’t it wonderful? I’d guess it’s a kind of fig – I saw something similar in Yakushima. That was curtain fig, Ficus microcarpa, the aerial roots of which were straddling a drive or small road, much as Jeffrey’s one appears to do. For some reason I never photographed it, so it’s great to see these excellent photographs. Sorry, but I think in Ohio you’d need a very large and fairly warm greenhouse to grow it – definitely subtropical! The common Swiss cheese plant (Monstera deliciosa) does a bit the same sort of thing, in time, with long aerial roots. Weird plants…
Thanks, Peter. I was actually wondering if it was some kind of Mangrove. Wish I could say I had a big greenhouse but I haven’t even a small one . Guess I’ll have to settle for a Weeping Willow for an enclosure-type tree.
Magnifique, as the French would say.