Exhalation of moss, mycelium, black mould; wafted savor of a thousand earthly growths, damp, clinging, redolent; aroma of mighty roots, of invisible spawn and seed—all the vast stirring of the earth’s desire. – Virginia Garland, “The Rain,” Out West: A Magazine of the Old Pacifi

The tree is more than first a seed, then a stem, then a living trunk, and then dead timber. The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky. – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands, translated from French b

But these trees are derelicts—throwing out a wisp of foliage here and there, a truce to death, with each returning spring. – Julia Ellen Rogers, “The Big Tree and the Redwood,” The Tree Book: A

No town can fail of beauty, though its walks were gutters and its houses hovels, if venerable trees make magnificent colonnades along its streets. – Henry Ward Beecher, Proverbs, 1887