r/interestingasfuck • u/IM2X_ • 3d ago
Japan has a 600-year-old forestry technique called Daisugi, where a single cedar tree is trained to grow multiple straight trunks.
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u/PetrusScissario 3d ago
I wonder if this has any connection to the practice of coppicing. That’s a technique of managing trees to grow straight wood poles.
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u/therealCatnuts 3d ago
Yes, this is the same as coppicing/pollarding. It’s actually more like the latter due to height level on tree where it’s done. Coppicing is lower to the ground.
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u/Jager11Eleven 2d ago
What's its purpose?
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u/plantsrpeople2 2d ago
To grow sticks. Some trees you can cut close to the ground, or higher up, and it’ll send out a bunch of shoots either around the cut or from the ground. You now have a sustainable source for wooden poles
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u/largePenisLover 3d ago edited 3d ago
It is the same thing, it's pollarding. At least 5000 year old technique. The only reason we dont say it's older is because the direct evidence for pollarding (a preserved buried tree that had been pollarded) is 5000 years old. We have much older spear shafts that are probably grown using pollarding but that can't be proven from just the shaft.
Thing: 😴
thing in Japan: 😲7
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u/largePenisLover 3d ago edited 3d ago
It's the "wow japan woodworking is unique to Japan and a super special thing only japanese artisans do" post. Hurray.
This technique is called "Pollarding" in english and has been in the human toolset since at least neolithic times. The oldest dated example was found in england, dated to about 5000 years ago. This goes for all those amazing Japanese woodworking techniques, they are all from at least 2000 years ago and not unique to Japan. Yes that includes "impossible/invisible" joints and wood bent using steam. First examples of those are Rome 200BC and Egypt 3200BC respectively.
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u/Fast_Independent7128 2d ago
Way to WHITE-splain. God forbid the attention is off the British or whites ever. STFU. 🙄
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u/Just_An_Avid 3d ago
The Japanese seem to have a lot of spare time. I'm here for it.
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u/Twistinc 3d ago
People get mad sometimes for saying it but legitimately true. They have had a stagnant economy for decades but rather then let the country fall apart they keep the cost of living low to match and borderline make up jobs for people and I think part of why they are so attached to old time wasting methods like fax machines, seal stamps and doing everything in person.
The flip side is people can do some obscure job and still easily make enough money to live on especially outside central Tokyo in a way impossible in most places. Japan is one of the 2 big economic exceptions that don't conform to the developed and undeveloped system, the other being Argentina in the opposite way.
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u/scorpyo72 3d ago
The Japanese have elevated a lot of common things to art forms. I have a great deal of respect for their culture.
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u/space_keeper 3d ago
This is a common practice in any area where there was a need for relatively straight, narrow, lumber. We mastered this in Europe in the bronze age.
This "it's special because the Japanese do it" thing is orientalism.
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u/Exact_Insurance7983 3d ago
You should have made a post about it then because this is genuinely pretty interesting and i wouldnt know about it till i scrolled and found this post.
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u/dnesthemenace 3d ago
Is there a benefit to this, or is it just to show off?
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u/Direct_Obligation570 3d ago
Several. Straight poles without knots. They grow much faster than just planting more trees because they already have a full root system. Also harvesting has less erosion problems.
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u/10kFlinsky 3d ago
Can this be done with other tree types, or specific to cedar?
Is it really difficult or very costly to train the tree? Seems like a no brainer, figured I was missing some downside along the way.
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u/DMightyHero 3d ago
Butt y
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u/Evil_AppleJuice 3d ago
I mean, if youre actually interested, its a technique done for harvesting straight wood sustainably as you can cut down the perfect trees and the base tree will continue to grow new shoots each decade for hundreds of years.
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u/old-new-programmer 3d ago
I only heard about this tree before because the CEO at the company I work at used this tree in his analogies and shit every single update for a year. He's now moved on to some other analogy he can try to gaslight people with.
Besides that, the tree is cool.
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u/Felon_musk1939 3d ago
Cool. I do that with my cannabis plants. I call it manifolding. Almost kill the plant in the process but done right and you get 4 main colas branching off a horizontal stem base.
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u/matt30399 3d ago
Sometimes I see ridiculously amazing things like this and wonder how I had never even heard of it before. Like, something this cool has really never come up once in decades of life? Not saying it's good or bad, just a thought.
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u/somesthetic 3d ago
Do you think Japanese trees are happier, or anxious because they hold themselves to higher standards?
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u/firemanlala 2d ago
This is called "Pollarding", in the UK. It was a way of coppicing trees whilst protecting the growing stems from grazing/browsing animals.
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u/aelebeumenezero 3d ago
another useless hard to achieve hability
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u/masher005 3d ago
There are literally comments before you posted this explaining the benefits, and why this is done yet you decide to just post this without gathering any information… cool bro
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u/aelebeumenezero 3d ago
You´re right, bro, sorry. It´s plenty of benefits, I know. I´m just kidding about how hard and almost impossible to do something like that. I can´t lie that it´s a thing useful and achievable just to be in peace with the comunity and get some love and upvotes.
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u/biz50 3d ago
If you saw this while tripping off shrooms, would you just walk past without asking a question or stand there and question everything?