Sometimes two tree branches will grow in such a way that they begin to touch. As the wind blows the branches and they rub together, the bark at the point of contact is gradually worn away, exposing the cambium. As the branches continue to grow, becoming thick enough to minimize their movement in the wind, bark can then re-grow around the point of contact, fusing the two branches together. This process is called inosculation, and in the 1920s a Swedish immigrant named Axel Erlandson observed it happening on his California farm.
Erlandson figured he’d give inosculation a go, and soon he was tinkering with sycamores to create geometric, conjoined shapes, symbols like hearts and lightning bolts, and weaving multiple trees in a circle to create baskets. Twenty years later, his property was covered with them.
In 1945 Erlandson’s wife and daughter, fresh off a vacation to Santa Cruz, observed that there was a lot of tourist traffic there along the coast, as opposed to their sleepy farm in Hilmar some 100 miles inland. Together they hatched the crazy idea that if they uprooted and moved Erlandson’s arboreal creations to the coast, they could sell tickets to tourists to view the oddities.
Amazingly, they pulled it off. Erlandson dug the trees up, carefully pruned the roots and wrapped them in peat moss and burlap, and somehow trucked the things over to a 3.5-acre plot of land he purchased in Scotts Valley, some six miles outside of Santa Cruz. I was not able to find a record of the precise number of trees he transported, but it was enough to open the tourist attraction he called “The Tree Circus" in 1947.
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