Taking a stroll through a forested city park the other day, I was planning to experiment with photographing relationships in nature.

Ferns were growing out of trees, and there’s certainly a relationship there. Mushrooms were growing on trees, snags, and logs — another relationship to be explored.

I also saw some nurse stumps: old stumps with younger trees growing from them.

As a matter of fact, I saw so many nurse stumps in just a few acres that I shifted my focus and decided to create this photo essay about the nurse stumps in this single, small park.

A springboard cut can be seen as a dark slash in the foreground stump in the header photo at top as well as in the stumps in the three photos below. These indicate that the stumps are quite old.

You can learn more about nurse logs and springboard cuts via the link below.

Here is an old stump with springboard cuts visible and a small tree growing from it.

Another old stump containing springboard cuts. This one has two trees growing out of it. It’s a little confusing visually, so the two photos above are front and rear views showing how the two new trees have split the old stump.

Above are three nurse stumps with fairly mature trees growing from them. In the first photo, the new tree is surrounding the old stump. In the second photo, the new tree has large root segments growing down through the clearly rotting stump. In the third photo, it looks like there are actually two trees growing from the stump, one much larger than the other.

And some of the trees growing from old stumps look quite young. Why were some stumps colonized much earlier than others?

Here’s an interesting one: it looks like the tree growing from the nurse stump started tipping, probably because part of the stump rotted away and no longer held that side of the tree up. But with roots firmly in the ground around the stump, the tree straightened out again.

Here is a close-up of the rotting area, and some of the smaller roots are visible, looking healthy in contrast to the stump rot.

And it’s not just stumps which nurse young trees: this rotted-away nurse log hosts quite a large tree.

John F. Williams, publisher of Salish Magazine: over decades of exploring underwater and in our forests and beaches, his experiences have been enriched by the insights of knowledgeable people.

For years, he shared those insights by making educational films and through lecture tours. Now, he publishes Salish Magazine to extend that notion of sharing insights by offering a wealth of articles that are keyed to the observable, but pull back the curtains to reveal the invisible.

Table of Contents, Issue #25, Autumn 2024