Drunken trees, tilted trees, or a drunken forest, is a stand of trees displaced from their normal vertical alignment.
This most commonly occurs in northern subarctic taiga forests of Black Spruce (Picea mariana) under which discontinuous permafrost or ice wedges have melted, causing trees to tilt at various angles.
Tilted trees may also be caused by frost heaving, and subsequent palsa development, hummocks, earthflows, forested active rock glaciers, landslides, or earthquakes. In stands of spruce trees of equal age that germinated in the permafrost active layer after a fire, tilting begins when the trees are 50 to 100 years old, suggesting that surface heaving from new permafrost aggradation can also create drunken forests.
Read more about Drunken Trees: Permafrost, Relationship To Climate Change, Further Reading
Famous quotes containing the words drunken and/or trees:
“In 1869 he started his work for temperance instigated by three drunken men who came to his home with a paper signed by a saloonkeeper and his patrons on which was written “For God’s sake organize a temperance society.””
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“It were a blessed sight to see
That child become a willow tree,
His brother trees among.
He’d be four times as tall as me,
And live three times as long.”
—Catherine Maria Fanshawe (1765–1834)