Bwaahhhhhh!

[On Peter's Hill at the Arnold Arboretum; 4pm, 11/9/08]

Doesn't it look like it's about to chuck apples at you at any minute? Except that it's not an apple tree (anyone identify it? I didn't get close enough to read the tag!).

In the movie version of the Wizard of Oz, the Fighting Trees hurl apples at the journeyers, but in the book they just pick the travelers up and toss them:

The Scarecrow, who was in the lead, finally discovered a big tree with such wide-spreading branches that there was room for the party to pass underneath. So he walked forward to the tree, but just as he came under the first branches they bent down and twined around him, and the next minute he was raised from the ground and flung headlong among his fellow travelers.

This tree we saw at the Arnold Arboretum on Sunday certainly looks capable of it. As they say of the villains in the telenovelas, es capaz de todo.

Comments

[kat]

LOL! It is a scary looking tree. So ugly, yet so beautiful. It definitely has character, I wish I could ID it for you, but I'm at a loss.

[Keith]

No idea, but hate to run into it on a cloudy night.

[marja-leena]

Very witchy indeed! No idea what it is, though the bark looks poplar-like.

[Dave]

Great find!

[Sara]

I would not trust this tree, either. Good thing the Arnold's staff keep all the trees hopped up on happy mulch, or who knows what would happen to Boston?

[leslee]

Thanks, all! It's probably particularly spooky this time of year. I wonder if it looks more benign in spring.

[mm]

Could be an ent?? Not sure he's villainous. Maybe just fearful of strangers. :-)

[leslee]

That's true, mm. Or t could just be like an English bulldog with a face that looks crabby in form but is not necessarily so by temperament. :-)