Tree Shaping
Tree shaping (also known by several other alternative names) uses living trees and other woody plants as the medium to create structures and art. There are a few different methods used by the various artists to shape their trees, which share a common heritage with other artistic horticultural and agricultural practices, such as pleaching, bonsai, espalier, and topiary, and employing some similar techniques. Most artists use grafting to deliberately induce the inosculation of living trunks, branches, and roots, into artistic designs or functional structures. Tree shaping has been practiced for at least several hundred years, as demonstrated by the living root bridges built and maintained by the Khasi people of India. Early 20th-century practitioners and artisans included banker John Krubsack, Axel Erlandson with his Tree Circus, and landscape engineer Arthur Wiechula. Several contemporary designers also produce tree-shaping projects. History Some species of trees e ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Axel Erlandson
Axel Erlandson (December 15, 1884 – April 28, 1964) was a Swedish American farmer who tree shaping, shaped trees as a hobby, and opened a horticultural attraction in 1947 called "The Tree Circus", advertised with the slogan "See the World's Strangest Trees Here". The trees appeared in the column of Robert ''Ripley's Believe It or Not!'' twelve times. Erlandson sold his attraction shortly before his death. The trees were moved to Gilroy Gardens in 1985. Biography Erlandson was born in 1884, in Halland, Sweden, to Alfred Erlandson (1850–1915) and Kristina Larsson (1844–1922). He had two older brothers, Ludwig (1879–1957) and Anthon (1881–1970), and one younger sister, Emma Swanson (1886–1969). The family emigrated to the United States in early 1886, settling in New Folden Township, Marshall County, Minnesota, where his father farmed and built barns, homes, and churches. His family also ran a limestone kiln, producing quicklime for mortar (masonry), mortar, plaster ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Designer
A designer is a person who plans the form or structure of something before it is made, by preparing drawings or plans. In practice, anyone who creates tangible or intangible objects, products, processes, laws, games, graphics, services, or experiences can be called a designer. Overview A designer is someone who conceptualizes and creates new concepts, ideas, or products for consumption by the general public. It is different from an artist who creates art for a select few to understand or appreciate. However, both domains require some understanding of aesthetics. The design of clothing, furniture, and other common artifacts were left mostly to tradition or artisans specializing in hand making them. With the increasing complexity in industrial design of today's society, and due to the needs of mass production where more time is usually associated with more cost, the production methods became more complex and with them, the way designs and their production are created. The classic ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Weaving
Weaving is a method of textile production in which two distinct sets of yarns or threads are interlaced at right angles to form a fabric or cloth. Other methods are knitting, crocheting, felting, and braiding or plaiting. The longitudinal threads are called the warp and the lateral threads are the weft, woof, or filling. The method in which these threads are interwoven affects the characteristics of the cloth. Cloth is usually woven on a loom, a device that holds warp threads in place while filling threads are woven through them. A fabric band that meets this definition of cloth (warp threads with a weft thread winding between) can also be made using other methods, including tablet weaving, back strap loom, or other techniques that can be done without looms. The way the warp and filling threads interlace with each other is called the weave. The majority of woven products are created with one of three basic weaves: plain weave, satin weave, or twill weave. Woven cl ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Plashing
Pleaching or plashing is a technique of interweaving living and dead branches through a hedge creating a fence, hedge or lattices. Trees are planted in lines, and the branches are woven together to strengthen and fill any weak spots until the hedge thickens. Branches in close contact may grow together, due to a natural phenomenon called inosculation, a natural graft. Pleach also means weaving of thin, whippy stems of trees to form a basketry effect. History Pleaching or plashing (an early synonym) was common in gardens from late medieval times to the early eighteenth century, to create shaded paths, or to create a living fence out of trees or shrubs. Commonly deciduous trees were used by planting them in lines. The canopy was pruned into flat planes with the lower branches removed leaving the stems below clear. This craft had been developed by European farmers who used it to make their hedge rows more secure. Julius Caesar (circa 60 B.C.) states that the Gallic tribe of Nervii ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hedge Laying
Hedgelaying (or hedge laying) is the process of partially cutting through and then bending the stems of a line of Shrub, shrubs or small trees, near ground level, without breaking them, so as to encourage them to produce new growth from the base and create a living ‘Agricultural fencing, stock proof fence’. It is a rural crafts, countryside skill that has been practised for centuries, mainly in the United Kingdom and Ireland, with many regional variations in style and technique. The first description of hedgelaying is in Julius Caesar's ''Commentaries on the Gallic War'', when his army was inconvenienced by thick woven hedges during the Battle of the Sabis in Belgium. Hedgelaying developed as a way of containing livestock in fields, particularly after the acts of enclosure which, in England, began in the 16th century. Today hedges are laid to contain livestock without the need for artificial fences, maintain biodiversity-friendly habitats, promote traditional skills and becau ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pleaching
Pleaching or plashing is a technique of interweaving living and dead branches through a hedge creating a fence, hedge or lattices. Trees are planted in lines, and the branches are woven together to strengthen and fill any weak spots until the hedge thickens. Branches in close contact may grow together, due to a natural phenomenon called inosculation, a natural graft. Pleach also means weaving of thin, whippy stems of trees to form a basketry effect. History Pleaching or plashing (an early synonym) was common in gardens from late medieval times to the early eighteenth century, to create shaded paths, or to create a living fence out of trees or shrubs. Commonly deciduous trees were used by planting them in lines. The canopy was pruned into flat planes with the lower branches removed leaving the stems below clear. This craft had been developed by European farmers who used it to make their hedge rows more secure. Julius Caesar (circa 60 B.C.) states that the Gallic tribe of Nervii ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ficus Elastica
''Ficus elastica'', the rubber fig, rubber bush, rubber tree, rubber plant, or Indian rubber bush, Indian rubber tree, or rambung is a species of flowering plant in the family Moraceae, native to eastern parts of South and Southeast Asia. It has become naturalized in Sri Lanka, the West Indies, and the US state of Florida. Its common names reflect its historical use as a source of rubber within its native range, but it is not used in the modern commercial-scale production of natural rubber. Description It is a large tree in the banyan group of figs, growing to – rarely up to – tall, with a stout trunk up to in diameter. The trunk develops aerial and buttressing roots to anchor it in the soil and help support heavy branches. It has broad shiny oval leaves long and broad; leaf size is largest on young plants (occasionally to long), much smaller on old trees (typically long). The leaves develop inside a sheath at the apical meristem, which grows larger as the new lea ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Banyan
A banyan, also spelled banian ( ), is a fig that develops accessory trunks from adjacent prop roots, allowing the tree to spread outwards indefinitely. This distinguishes banyans from other trees with a strangler habit that begin life as an epiphyte, i.e. a plant that grows on another plant, when its seed germinates in a crack or crevice of a host tree or edifice. "Banyan" often specifically denotes '' Ficus benghalensis'' (the "Indian banyan"), which is the national tree of India, though the name has also been generalized to denominate all figs that share a common life cycle and used systematically in taxonomy to denominate the subgenus '' Urostigma''. Characteristics Like other fig species, banyans also bear their fruit in the form of a structure called a "syconium". The syconium of ''Ficus'' species supply shelter and food for fig wasps and the trees depend on the fig wasps for pollination. Frugivore birds disperse the seeds of banyans. The seeds are small, and be ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Aerial Root
Aerial roots are Root, roots growing above the ground. They are often Plant development#Adventitious structures, adventitious, i.e. formed from nonroot tissue. They are found in diverse plant species, including epiphytes such as orchids (''Orchidaceae''), tropical coastal swamp trees such as mangroves, banyan figs (''Ficus subg. Urostigma''), the warm-temperate rainforest rata (''Metrosideros robusta''), and pōhutukawa trees of New Zealand (''Metrosideros excelsa''). Vines such as common ivy (''Hedera helix'') and poison ivy (''Toxicodendron radicans'') also have aerial roots. Types This plant organ that is found in so many diverse plant-families has different specializations that suit the plant-habitat. In general growth-form, they can be technically classed as ''gravitropism, negatively gravitropic'' (grows up and away from the ground) or ''positively gravitropic'' (grows down toward the ground). "Stranglers" (prop-root) Banyan trees are an example of a strangler fig th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Suspension Bridge
A suspension bridge is a type of bridge in which the deck (bridge), deck is hung below suspension wire rope, cables on vertical suspenders. The first modern examples of this type of bridge were built in the early 1800s. Simple suspension bridges, which lack vertical suspenders, have a long history in many mountainous parts of the world. Besides the bridge type most commonly called suspension bridges, covered in this article, there are other types of suspension bridges. The type covered here has cables suspended between towers, with vertical ''suspender cables'' that transfer the Structural load#Live load, imposed loads, transient load, live and Structural load#Dead load, dead loads of the deck below, upon which traffic crosses. This arrangement allows the deck to be level or to arc upward for additional clearance. Like other suspension bridge types, this type often is constructed without the use of falsework. The suspension cables must be anchored at each end of the bridge, s ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Meghalaya
Meghalaya (; "the abode of clouds") is a states and union territories of India, state in northeast India. Its capital is Shillong. Meghalaya was formed on 21 January 1972 by carving out two districts from the Assam: the United Khasi Hills and Jaintia Hills and the Garo Hills.History of Meghalaya State Government of India The estimated population of Meghalaya in 2014 was 3,211,474. Meghalaya covers an area of approximately 22,429 square kilometres, with a length-to-breadth ratio of about 3:1.Meghalaya IBEF, India (2013) The state is bound to the south by the Bangladeshi divisions of Mymensingh Division, Mymensingh and Sylhet Division, Sylhet, to the west by the Bangladeshi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nongriat
Nongriat is a village in the East Khasi Hills district of Meghalaya State, in north-eastern India. It is perhaps best known for its living root bridges; one an impressive double-decker suspension bridge called Jingkieng Nongriat. The village has three functional root bridges. These are crafted by hand, as the Khasi people have done in the Khasi Hills for centuries, intertwining and weaving together the aerial roots of banyan trees on opposite sides of a stream-filled gorge. Jingkieng Nongriat, better known simply as ''Double Decker,'' has been featured on international television programs such as the ''Human Planet'' series filmed in 2008 by BBC Wales, and a documentary by Osamu Monden in June 2004 for Asahi TV in Japan. There is another functioning living root bridge upstream from Nongriat, along with a hybrid structure that is made from both roots and steel wire. Near Nongriat, and best viewed from the neighboring village of Laitkynsew during the autumn monsoon season a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |