Saw a huge old oak with a weird growth pattern in a park near Cincinnati

I was walking through Eden Park yesterday and stopped to look at this massive white oak near the overlook. It had this big, burly burl about eight feet up on the trunk, but the crazy part was how the main branches grew in a perfect spiral around it (like a corkscrew, you know?). I've never seen a tree manage its structure like that to work around a defect. Has anyone else run into a mature tree that grew in a full spiral like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_phoenix29d ago

Yeah, "unscrew itself" is a funny image but that's not really what's happening here. The spiral growth is actually a structural adaptation called reaction wood, where the tree compensates for stress or leans by twisting fibers to redistribute weight. It's less about trying to unscrew itself and more like the tree reinforced its own frame over decades to keep from splitting under that heavy burl.

grayb641mo ago

Guess the tree was trying to unscrew itself.

gibson.sean1mo ago

Hah, good one @grayb64. That's some serious reverse engineering from the tree. Next thing you know, it'll be trying to change its own oil. I've seen some twisted grain before, but that thing looks like it spent its whole life trying to become a giant corkscrew. Nature is weird sometimes.