Words for the Western Landscape

“Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape”: Krummholz

By Jenny Shank, 12-03-10

In his introduction to Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape, editor Barry Lopez writes, “The land beyond our towns, for many, has become a generalized landscape of hills and valleys, of beaches, rivers and monotonous deserts…almost without our knowing it, the particulars of these landscapes have slipped away from us.” Published this year in a paperback edition by Trinity University Press, Home Ground (480 pages, $19.95) seeks to preserve terms that describe the natural landscape by compiling definitions written by accomplished writers.  Over the next several weeks, New West will feature excerpts from Home Ground.  Today’s term is “krummholz,” as described by William Kittredge.  Kittredge is the award-winning author of such books as Hole in the Sky and The Next Rodeo: New and Selected Essays.

krummholz

Krummholz is a German word meaning “crooked wood.” It is used to designate the dwarfed and deformed coniferous vegetation of the transition zone between subalpine forest and the treeless alpine tundra. Because of a mixing of species from each region, the krummholz, an ecotone, has a richer flora than either alone. Wind speeds may exceed one hundred miles per hour in krummholz, snow can accumulate to depths of twelve feet, and the growing season is often less than two months. The crowns of trees here often become one-sided as their windward branches fail to develop. The result is a low deformed wood of asymmetrical “flag trees” and low-branching, interwoven mats of foliage. Krummholz systems in the southern Rocky Mountains run in a band between 11,000 and 12,000 feet of elevation. These trees are surviving at their environmental limit, so growth is slow and irregular. Trees several hundred years old may have a trunk diameter of four inches, and may be only a few feet tall. - William Kittredge

Excerpted with permission from Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape, edited by Barry Lopez and Debra Gwartney, Trinity University Press. Available at booksellers everywhere.

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