Friday 5 December 2008

Moulting Trees

As I have said a few times lately, it is rather tropical here at the moment (that’s how the locals sarcastically describe damn hot, at this time of the year, when speaking to a tourist!)

We all know that cats moult, usually all over the best chair in the place, and dogs moult as the weather warms up, but trees?

I looked up a definition:
Moulting noun
periodic shedding of the cuticle in arthropods or the outer skin in reptiles.
(Dictionary.com)

Hmmm … I am not sure which category a tree would fit into, but I am still sure that they are moulting.

I have searched further, and lo and behold, cuticle is the connection to the plant kingdom …
Cuticle noun
Botany. a very thin hyaline film covering the surface of plants, derived from the outer surfaces of the epidermal cells.

I knew it! I have been watching them, and they are definitely moulting; you can even see the pile of skin on the ground below them!
























































I guess they too will feel cooler when the rains come.





2 comments:

swenglishexpat said...

When it gets too hot I take off one layer, so why not trees? ;-)

Veronica said...

I guess that is fair enough too.