What is it... well to an ecologists, forester or a field botanist the name is familiar. To me, neither a field botanist or an ecologists - not quite a forester (mostly a forest tree biologist), it is beyond familiar...
its a phrase representing the most emotional and storied trees you find in the landscape...
a nice Silvicultural explaination:
A wolf tree has an unusually large crown for the stand. Often wolf trees grew up in relatively open conditions and the rest of the forest stand fills in around it.
-from: How Do We Shape The Forest: Silviculture
http://www.thewolftree.com/wolfdef.htm
had a bit of a definition of it - not in my words... but the book looks delicious...
The power of a tree that grew in an opening, unencroached by limits to its sunlight, allowed to fulfill its complete genetic potential. Either growing in the fence row of a field, or any other natural or human influenced wide open space...
The tree literally 'wolfs' up the space around it...
They seem normal alone, out in the field...
We see them all the time driving around...
The drama takes on a rich complexity at the point when small, younger trees take over the open space... a reforestation of sorts...
The young trees grow in tight crowded packed stands... exhibiting the second genetic form, a form that results from intense competition around it, straight arrow trunks, clean and clear to the top.
from a commercial point of view these wolf trees are nothing more than firewood, their age and complexity and branches challenge the mills... however the dense stands of straight trunks make the lumber sales team salivate...
I'm always curious about the story each tree has to say... what have they seen... why are they there? Did they start off in a forest, were they the runt of the trees, the ones no one wanted? Did they then explode in a flurry of dormant buds, thirsty for the power and energy from the sun?
I think that's the draw to a Wolf Tree to me... i want to get to know them... but how... how...
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