Original photo by Traveller70/ Shutterstock
Near the small town of Gryfino in northwestern Poland is a forest unlike any other. It’s not the biggest or the tallest, but it just might be the strangest. In this forest stand about 400 pine trees that have all been uniformly deformed into a shape resembling the letter “J.” These trees are bent by about 90 degrees at the start of their trunk, and then slowly grow upward some 50 feet, creating a curve that can be nearly 10 feet long in some cases. The effect is so stunning that the forest earned the nickname Krzywy Las, or “Crooked Forest,” and has become a significant tourist attraction. But perhaps the strangest aspect of this natural phenomenon is that no one is exactly sure why the trees are growing like this in the first place.
Oops, incorrect!
It's a factThe first appearance of the word “wódka,” the Polish spelling of the famous liquor, appears in 1405 court documents from the Palatinate of Sandomierz in Poland.
Estimates show that these crooked pines were likely planted sometime in the late 1920s or early 1930s, though no records show who planted them. While some have theorized that a bizarre snowstorm or a strange effect of the Earth’s gravitational pull somehow deformed the trees, the leading theory is that their odd shape was created by human hands. This theory argues that local foresters interrupted the trees’ growth when the plants were between 7 to 10 years old, forcing them to bend so that furniture and boats could be fashioned out of their unique shape. But with the outbreak of World War II and the invasion of Poland in 1939, the trees were abandoned and left to grow into their famously crooked shapes. Sadly, many of these trees are now dying (perhaps partly as a result of visitor traffic) and so the Gryfino Forest District has begun a revitalization project by setting aside two 10-acre plots for recreating these crooked pines. The project will experiment with planting seeds from existing crooked pines to observe any unusual traits. The forest service also is clearing away the tops of some dead trees that pose hazards — while leaving behind their characteristic curve for tourists to enjoy.
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Groups of trees that don’t stand up straight are sometimes called “______.”
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Groups of trees that don’t stand up straight are sometimes called “drunken forests.”
There are several dozen trees living in the U.S. that have been to the moon.
In February 1971, NASA astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell landed on the moon at the apex of the Apollo 14 mission. Astronaut Stuart Roosa was orbiting overhead in the command module, and packed away in his personal kit were seeds from five tree varieties — loblolly pine, sycamore, sweetgum, redwood, and Douglas fir. This lunar journey was part of a joint experiment between NASA and the U.S. Forest Service to test the effects of zero gravity on seeds and their subsequent growth into trees. After Apollo 14 returned safely to Earth, these seeds were eventually planted throughout the U.S., where they became known as “moon trees.” One was planted at the White House, and many others throughout the country in state capitals and parks. (Scientists never found evidence that their trip to space had affected the seeds or trees.) The project was mostly forgotten as the fervor surrounding the Apollo program subsided, but in 1996 NASA astronomer and archivist David Williams received an e-mail from a third grade teacher in Indiana about a nearby “moon tree.” Fascinated by this lost piece of NASA history, Williams began cataloging the location of these arboreal space voyagers. Today, you can visit several dozen “moon trees” that are surviving and thriving across the U.S.
Darren Orf lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes about all things science and climate. You can find his previous work at Popular Mechanics, Inverse, Gizmodo, and Paste, among others.
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