spine-tree

Updated: June 21, 2025

The orchard had lost all semblance of regularity, for in the thousand years since the hand of man had pruned or cared for it Mother Nature had planted and replanted it times beyond counting. Small and gnarled and crooked the trees were, as the spine-tree souls in Dante's dolorosa selva. Here or there a pine had rooted and grown tall, killing the lesser tribe of green things underneath.

George Allan England - Darkness and Dawn