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Written in the Trees: The Roots of Arborglyphs 

"Since earliest times, trees – symbolically anchored in the earth and stretched towards the cosmos – have been inherently connected with human identity.”

Words and symbols carved onto a living tree are sometimes described as ‘arborglyphs’ (derived from arbor ‘tree’; glyphein ‘to carve’), but some people think of it vandalism or ‘tree graffiti’. Whatever the name, tree writing is driven by multifarious social and cultural factors; love, solitude, rivalry, identity, artistry, boredom, or downright bragging.

Arborglyphs are present across many cultures. In Australia the Gamilaroi and Wiradjuri peoples carved ceremonial trees to connect with ancestors. The Scorpion Tree of the Chumash people is thought to be an astrological tool whilst the Moriori people on Chatham Islands carved symbols of the natural world and faces of their ancestors into kopi trees.

As agriculture developed over time carved trees become landscape noticeboards, trail-markers or shelter. For global romantics, the gesture of carving a lover’s initials into a tree appeared as far back as Ovid’s Heroides:

‘The beech trees guard my name, cut there by you;
and I read ‘Oenone’, written there by your knife.
And as the trunk grows, my name grows the same;
grow, and rise straight, in honour of my name!’


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