The Dancing Forest (russian: Танцующий лес, translit=Tantsuyushchiy les) is a

pine A pine is any conifer tree or shrub in the genus ''Pinus'' () of the family (biology), family Pinaceae. ''Pinus'' is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae. The World Flora Online created by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Missouri Botanic ...

forest on the

Curonian Spit The Curonian (Courish) Spit ( lt, Kuršių nerija; russian: Ку́ршская коса́ (Kurshskaya kosa); german: Kurische Nehrung, ; lv, Kuršu kāpas) is a long, thin, curved sand-dune spit that separates the Curonian Lagoon from the Balt ...

Kaliningrad Oblast Kaliningrad Oblast (russian: Калинингра́дская о́бласть, translit=Kaliningradskaya oblast') is the westernmost federal subject of Russia. It is a semi-exclave situated on the Baltic Sea. The largest city and admini ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eigh ...

noted for its unusually twisted trees. Unlike

drunken trees Drunken trees, tilted trees, or a drunken forest, is a stand of trees rotated from their normal vertical alignment. This most commonly occurs in northern subarctic taiga forests of black spruce (''Picea mariana'') under which discontinuous perma ...

, the trees in the Dancing Forest are twisted into several patterns, such as rings, hearts and convoluted spirals bending to the ground. The exact cause of the trees' distortion is unknown. According to one version, the distortion is caused by the activity of the caterpillar of ''

Rhyacionia buoliana ''Rhyacionia buoliana'', the pine shoot moth, is a moth of the family Tortricidae. It is native to North Africa, North Asia, and Europe, and invasive in North America and South America. The wingspan is 16–24 mm. The forewings are ferru ...

''. In the folk version, the Dancing Forest follows the movement of the sands.

History

The trees were planted in the 1960s. Before World War II the site accommodated a

Nazi German Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

gliding Gliding is a recreational activity and competitive air sport in which pilots fly unpowered aircraft known as gliders or sailplanes using naturally occurring currents of rising air in the atmosphere to remain airborne. The word ''soaring'' is ...

school.

References

{{Portal bar, Environment, Trees, Russia Forests of Russia Geography of Kaliningrad Oblast

History

See also

References