the.com/tree trunk
A plant's spine, plumbing, and resume of every year it survived.
means The thick, woody central stem of a tree that supports its branches and carries water and nutrients between roots and leaves.
from 'Trunk' traces to Latin 'truncus,' meaning a maimed or lopped thing — a body or stem with limbs cut away. The same root gives us the trunk of an elephant (a dangling, limb-like part), a travel trunk (a boxy torso of luggage), and the trunk of your body (torso minus head and limbs). The tree sense is the oldest and most literal: the bare, branchless pillar left when you imagine stripping everything else off.
- ring count
- Each ring is one year, drought or feast
- dead center
- Heartwood is technically dead, just structurally stubborn
- living layer
- Only the thin outer cambium is actually alive