Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 April 1896 — Four Trees in One Trunk. [ARTICLE]

Four Trees in One Trunk.

Four miles from Pineville, McDonald County, on the grounds of J. L. Parish, ■ is a freak of nature so curious that if I had not seen it with my own eyes, I could scarcely have believed it possible. On the bank of the Elk River rises a large tree that towers high above the neighboring trees. At the ground a solid i buttressed trunk appears from eight to ten feet in diameter. A little higher than a man’s head this trunk divides into four lesser trunks, the two smaller ot which are in themselves fair-sized trees, while the other two are far above the average size. Here comes in the queer part of the story. Of these divergent trunks the two large ones are respectively an elm and a sycamore, while the two smaller ones are an oak and a sycamore Above the union of the common trunk each tree in leaf, branch and bark is normal to its type. The trunk itself seems a homogeneous whole. I would not presume to say that close examination would not show in the bark from different sections of the trunk those peculiarities that distinguish the bark of one tree from that of the other, but certainly these characteristics do not appear on cursory examination, nor are there lines of jointure visible where the four trunks coalesce. I doubt if any one can point to a stranger growth than this—two sycamores, an oak and an elm, all growing from one common trunk. This meeting together of four youthful tree trunks as they thickened with age is occasionally seen, but this is an unusually fine illustration. Each tree must, however, form its own bark—that Is to say, no one of them has been wholly enveloped by another. Hence a careful investigation ought to disclose a slight line where the incurving bark of each original tree meets.