https://x.com/wrathofgnon/status/1250287741247426565, https://xcancel.com/wrathofgnon/status/1250287741247426565
The article is pretty light on details. Essentially, the tree is first pruned to create a wide and sturdy base; once that's stable, subsequent shoots from the branches are pruned to grow vertically. The technique relies on this particular variety of cedar which tends to grow vertically but can also be made to spread out a bit. It has some advantages in space-saving and efficiency but it's also very labor-intensive.
I don't quite understand -- what is it about this technique that makes the trees grow perfectly straight and why is
> the lumber produced in this method is 140% as flexible as standard cedar and 200% as dense/strong,
?
This article is just a rehash or summary. Check out one of the sources it links to (since the other is broken) for details on the technique: https://mymodernmet.com/kitayama-cedar-daisugi/
The strength & flexibility I would guess are attributable to the lack of knots and the straightness of the grain.
One thing both writers keep doing that's annoying is calling it a cedar. The tree is cryptomeria japonica, known as sugi, which in English is sometimes known by various misnomers such as "Japanese cedar" and "Japanese redwood," both of which should be taken as more poetic than scientific.
Few trees called "cedar" are in the Cedrus genus. To be fair many of these were called a type of "cedar" before the Cedrus genus was even coined. Cedar really just means "a really good tree" (for woodworking)
TIL that PNW Western Red Cedars are not in fact, Cedar trees!
Again, what is and isn't a "true cedar" is a silly debate. Some of these trees were called cedars before Cedrus was even coined. Junipers and even citrus were called cedars long before Linnaeus came along. It really got applied to any tree that had scented, rot-resistant wood
In fact, most trees called cedars are NOT Cedrus.
It’s exploiting the natural tendency of trees to create “waterspouts” through a technique called pollarding. When a tree suffers an injury it creates a bunch of new twigs that tend to grow straight upwards if the injury is on the upper branches. The waterspouts grow more slowly and so in this species of cedar they develop those desirable properties.
It is actually a type of cypress, not a cedar.
They grow straight because they are shoots/suckers, and that's how tree biology works. And they are pruned every two years to prevent knots and side branches.
The lumber is dense/strong because the shoots have a robustness advantage due to being part of a mature tree with all its resources.
It's not limited to Japan. The French call them 'trognes'
https://www.agroforesterie.fr/la-trogne-arbre-paysan-aux-mil...
Other countries do it too :
In english this is called pollarding a tree. Historically it has been used for smaller wood pieces (firewood, etc). It's fuctionally different [from daisugi] because you don't get construction grade timber from it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollarding
[edit: clarification]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37759366
Same discussion 3 years ago
Thanks, macroexpanded, and another one...
Daisugi, the Japanese technique of growing trees out of other trees (2020) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37759366 - Oct 2023 (102 comments)
Daisugi, the 600-year-old Japanese technique of growing trees out of other trees - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26941631 - April 2021 (171 comments)
Isn't this just Pollarding and/or Coppicing, which have been practiced for at least 2000 years in Europe (and probably many other cultures as well), with a healthy dose of orientalism added on top?
>with a healthy dose of orientalism added on top
Also known as 'Thing, Japan'. HN eats up articles like this every single week.
> Also known as 'Thing, Japan'. HN eats up articles like this every single week.
And invariably the top comment is a "Thing Also in Europe/US" smugly citing that the commenter knows about something that's vaguely similar which happens to be in their neck of woods rather than Japan; and therefore makes the article irrelevant (this part is never adequately explained).
The most recent one I remember was reacting to something about konbinis by saying "So what, Poland also has lots of convenience stores".
What! Well thats absurd. Canada has more convenience stores than Poland!
This is such an interesting subtext. I think the original comment was a bit unfair to call it "just pollarding," at the least it's a very specific subtype that has its own culture and clear uniqueness.
Your comment feels somewhat reductive as well, you could basically replace "Japan" with a lot of things that are appreciated by some sizable subset of HN readers.
But, for some reason Japan does seem to inspire a certain fervor in both the otakus and weeaboos and their inverses. I think it's because it's the closest thing to an alien civilization for Westerners.
If it makes you feel any better, the reverse holds as well. Grass is greener mentality exists everywhere.
I remember in the 1990s watching a bit of British TV, where an ad asked, "What do women in Los Angeles know about beauty that British women don't?" (obviously selling some "secret" "American" product).
In LA those are either French or Italian women, selfishly hoarding all the good skin cream. I then wondered who the French and Italian women think are the beauty-secret-holders...
From the twitter thread this was stolen from:
“It is a little different, more like pollarding, and it doesn't work with any other conifers than saplings from one specific mutant cedar in a shrine near Kyoto.”
Please link a photo of a coppice/pollard in Europe that's as straight as this, along with the location where I can see it.
If you do, I have got a great new travel destination. If you don't then everyone else (and hopefully you too) will understand why people think this is special enough to link beyond the fact that it happens to be in Japan.
The parent commenter rightfully criticizes these kinds of sentences:
> Necessity being the mother of invention, this led to the creation of an ingenious solution: daisugi, the growing of additional trees, in effect, out of existing trees — creating, in other words, a kind of giant bonsai.
It tries to sell something as completely unique. It’s not. For example this sentence should emphasize what’s unique with daisugi, because there is a very good English word with this exact same meaning as written in this sentence: grafting.
> there is a very good English word with this exact same meaning as written in this sentence: grafting.
Grafting is joining cuttings from one tree to a rootstock of another. That is not what's going on here at all, it's limited to a single tree.
Something like "selective pollarding", maybe, but that's very far from being a common English word. And as I said, most pollarding I have seen is nowhere as straight and tall as this.
Are coppicing and pollarding used at all to produce timber? I had the impression that it was done only to make firewood, and was cut repeatedly without letting it grow like described in the article.
Ben Law in the UK used a sweet chestnut coppice as timbers for his house. Done properly coppicing can not only produce renewable and sustainable timber, but it is one of the only woodland management techniques that has significant positive impact on the ecology of the woodland in which it is practiced.
Some of the big "evil" forestry practices are now known to be helpful. Even clearcutting, if done in strips, is know to open up diverse habitats, replacing a uniform forest with a more varied one more amenable to animals.
I agree. In reality the only "evil" forestry practice in my mind practices are illegal logging. When everything is done by the book (my context is the UK) then there's a 10 year management plan (normally), felling license (always) and a re-stock agreement (always). It's a crop, but the public don't get that message and tend to view harvesting as an ecological tragedy. The clearcutting in strips is referred to as strip felling in the UK. Another one used increasingly more is continuous cover[0].
With a few narrow exceptions most timber crops in the the UK are monocultures or very limited mixes of pines/spruces/firs which outside of nesting season support very limited ecosystem. Even then the management plan for the site would have to account for species present and respond accordingly. Badgers? 20m no go zone from their sett and it may involve another license from Natural England.
I tend to operate at the border of woodland management and forestry. Coppicing typically tends to fall into the woodland management category due to the smaller scale nature of it, especially for when it is for "green woodworking" or craft use. The larger scale biomass coppice sites are very firmly in the forestry size, but still retain the ecological benefits to an extent.
[0]: https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/research/continuous-cover-...
It depends of the type of tree. Ash used to be used both for firewood and timber in France. I have ~35 250 year old ash trees like this, a good chunk of the branches are straight, just not as vertical as the ones from the technique above (which looks really neat). Those have not being well cared for by the previous owners though, I'm quite sure that with better care and selection of buds they would have produced more straight branches.
Coppicing is used for lumber for baskets and other weaving techniques, at least in Appalachia.
I had first heard of the concept of doing this to trees as it related to the production of arrows...
Looks more advanced than simple pollarding. I have never seen this kind of straight, tall tree tops in Europe. If it exists I would like to know!
It is more intensive and aesthetic but functionally I believe it’s exactly the same.
Yes, it's exactly it. But call it 'giant bonsai', and it sounds like a new discovery.
Well, except for the part where it depends on a mutation.
Unless you believe that Japanese version makes trees mutate, it's still pollarding.
The japanese version depends on propogating a specific mutated variant.
Yes. It's exactly like how it works everywhere, though? You can't pollard any tree, it needs to have genetically predetermined ability to sprout from the stump.
It doesn't depend on a mutation.
“It is a little different, more like pollarding, and it doesn't work with any other conifers than saplings from one specific mutant cedar in a shrine near Kyoto.”
Yes it is.
Im confused.. wouldnt this be suspect to a weight limit - as the full stem would weigh on the carrying "tree" - especially during wind and storms?
When doing coppicing it's definitely something to be careful with. Once started, the trees needs to be cared for regularly. E.g. on the ash trees I have, it needs to be "harvested" every 8 to 9 years. If you fail to do that there's the risk of the tree splitting because of the weight but also branches breaking indeed in case of storms.
It's cute because it's trees.
Somehow I keep thinking Mad Max where women were kept just to produce baby and milk, or Alien where alien "subtree" sprouted from human "tree".
I guess nature/human is cruel?
Yeah I kinda feel bad for the trees but they probably don't care
I thought this was the name of a new startup
An ad or something on this page attempted to load a link in an app I did not have
Interesting technique, horrible article. Manages to convey significantly less information than the X thread it mined for ad revenue.
Not sure that's entirely fair - openculture.com is usually pretty good, and the article draws on multiple sources. But I take your word for it that the twitter thread is good and have added it to the top text.
That tweet is not original text either, has no citations, and is not the source of the openculture article.
It's mentioned at the end, IIRC.