Arborglyphs

The trunk of this tree shows the markings of a number of tree carvers.  In my view this is another, but even more offensive, form of disgraceful graffiti. And yet there is interest here.  The traditinal intials surronded by a heart seems to be almost a cultual tradition, but others carve names and dates for reasons unknown.

I was interested to find there is a technical term for the practice, and have used it as the title for this post. The other descriptive phrase I found was "culturally modified tree" that evidently is so widely used that an acronym is commonly understood (CMT).

At any rate, I prefer trees un-culturally modified, but I guess there are many who disagree.