our poor dear friend from last week's workshop has been cut down

Manitoba Maples, toblers for short

A tobler’s super power is its ability to act as a first-response tree in any disturbed site. These trees have impressive capacity to stretch, bend backwards, switch directions twice and bring themselves into every possible patch of sunlight from wherever its maple key (samara) lands.

The huge quantity of of seemingly present year-round seeds helps them to get into any little crack or patch of soil. Toblers are known to hold onto their seeds until mid-winter, when the wind can send them skittering across the snow much further than they could fly otherwise.

...but they simply cannot be stopped !

One of our favourite traits of the Manitoba Maple is its ability to thwart lawn mowers. By growing so quickly and being so resilient, they can often grow enough between mows that the machine eventually just goes around them, creating little islands of wildness. Do you think that’s what happened here? All kinds of plants and creatures benefit from these islands – can you see any signs of other life around these trees?