Stylized Baby Chestnut Leaves
by Anita Pollak
Title
Stylized Baby Chestnut Leaves
Artist
Anita Pollak
Medium
Photograph - Photograph, Filters, Textures, Digital Art
Description
I love baby leaves - they are one of my favorite signs of spring. Here in New England our first baby leaves usually start to open in late April on the Siebold Viburnum in our front yard, but not until early May for the trees in our woods.
The American Chestnut tree holds a special place in my heart because they once dominated the New England landscape, but were basically wiped out by the Chestnut Blight in the first half of the 20th Century. The remaining trees are sprouts that don't survive to maturity, so the tree is considered "functionally extinct" in the wild. However, groups including the American Chestnut Foundation are working to breed blight-resistant trees.
Here's more information from the American Chestnut Foundation site:
"More than a century ago, nearly 4 billion American chestnut trees were growing in the eastern U.S. They were among the largest, tallest, and fastest-growing trees. The wood was rot-resistant, straight-grained, and suitable for furniture, fencing, and building. The nuts fed billions of birds and animals. It was almost a perfect tree, that is, until a blight fungus killed it more than a century ago. The chestnut blight has been called the greatest ecological disaster to strike the world’s forests in all of history.
"The American chestnut tree survived all adversaries for 40 million years, then disappeared within 40.
"The American chestnut tree (Castanea dentata) once dominated the eastern half of the U.S. Because it could grow rapidly and attain huge sizes, the tree was often the outstanding visual feature in both urban and rural landscapes. The wood was used wherever strength and rot-resistance was needed.
"In colonial America, chestnut was a preferred species for log cabins, especially the bottom rot-prone foundation logs. Later posts, poles, flooring, and railroad ties were all made from chestnut lumber.
"The edible nut was also a significant contributor to the rural economy. Hogs and cattle were often fattened for market by allowing them to forage in chestnut-dominated forests. Chestnut ripening coincided with the Thanksgiving-Christmas holiday season, and turn-of-the-century newspaper articles often showed train cars overflowing with chestnuts rolling into major cities to be sold fresh or roasted. The American chestnut was truly a heritage tree.
"All of this began to change at or slightly before the turn of the century with the introduction of Cryphonectria parasitica, the causal agent of chestnut blight. This disease reduced the American chestnut from its position as the dominant tree species in the eastern forest ecosystem to little more than an early-succession-stage shrub. There has been essentially no chestnut lumber sold in the U.S. for decades, and the bulk of the annual 20-million-pound nut crop now comes from introduced chestnut species or imported nuts.
"Despite its decimation as a lumber and nut-crop species, the American chestnut has not gone extinct. It is considered functionally extinct by the USDA because the blight fungus does not kill the tree’s root system underground. The American chestnut has survived by sending up stump sprouts that grow vigorously in logged or otherwise disturbed sites, but inevitably succumb to the blight and die back to the ground."
Processed in Photoshop with Topaz Studio to give the leaves a sketch effect, and textures from Jai Johnson.
Nikon D700 with Nikon 105mm micro lens
Featured in the following FAA groups:
Five Star Artist - 10/29/2018
1000 Views - 10/26/2018
500 Views - 5/28/2018
Road to Self Promotion - 5/23/2018
Art District - 5/22/2018
Camera Art - 5/15/2018
Art and Meditation - 5/5/2018
The Earth is Art - 4/22/2018
Nikon Full Frame Cameras - 4/15/2018
Macro Marvels - 4/15/2018
Beauty in Art - 4/14/2018
Artistic Aperture - 4/14/2018
Uploaded
April 13th, 2018
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Viewed 1,682 Times - Last Visitor from Fairfield, CT on 04/16/2024 at 8:34 AM
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