Healing/sealing

The desire for healing is so strong at present - healing from illness and healing from stress,  loss and grief.
Today I started noticing wounded  trees and found out a bit about them.

Trees don't heal, they seal. When there's damage the area is isolated (compartmentalized) by shutting off the flow of sap, and then the cambium (active layer between the bark and the wood)  starts to grow inwards - a sort of scar tissue that seals the wound. This seems to be what's happening in the first picture and in the second the covering is complete. The third example is a bit different because there hasn't been a wound, rather,  a woodbine stem has gripped the trunk and the bark has  grown around it, forming a spiral cicatrice. 

I also learnt that in Australia there are ancient 'scar trees' bearing the wounds where indigenous people long ago removed sections of bark to make things. These are precious now as   evidence of cultural practices that have disappeared, and the trees are themselves are dying off.
See here:
https://ausearthed.blogspot.com/2020/07/aboriginal-heritage-scar-trees.html

Amanda Palmer reads Mary Oliver's When I am Among  the Trees
by Mary Oliver here.