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 place is all awave with trees,
Limes, myrtles, purple-beaded,
Acacias having drunk the lees
Of the night-dew, fain headed,
And wan, grey olive-woods, which seem
The fittest foliage for a dream. – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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