Pit-and-mound features persist for nearly a millennium after a tree falls

Evidence

When a live tree falls in a forest its roots rip out of the ground, excavating the pit, or cradle. The roots, now sticking up into the air, hold the earth removed from the cradle. Over time, as the roots decay the excavated earth is dropped, creating the mound, or pillow. Once formed, the live roots of surrounding trees invade the pillow and cradle, stabilizing them. Large pillows and cradles in New England can still be visible almost a millennium after a tree-toppling event. — Tom Wessels, Forest Forensics, 16

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines cradle and pillow as the pit and mound of a tree-fall, key field-guide vocabulary.
• SHARE: For a forester or landscape ecology friend: tree-fall pillows can survive recognizably for a thousand years.
• XREF: connects to: Standing on a pillow and looking over the cradle reveals wind origin — Tom Wessels, Forest Forensics: A Field Guide to…, 110; Forest age and composition changes cluster along disturbance-history boundaries — Tom Wessels, Forest Forensics: A Field Guide to…, 30; Soil formation takes centuries, making its loss nearly irreparable — Vinson Brown, Reading the Woods: Seeing More in…, 230

Related

• Standing on a pillow and looking over the cradle reveals wind origin (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Soil formation takes centuries, making its loss nearly irreparable #corroborates (0.78) — Vinson Brown, Reading the Woods, 230
• Forest age and composition changes cluster along disturbance-history boundaries #complicates (0.75) — Tom Wessels, Forest Forensics, 30