There's a common idea in art and fiction of a "deep dark forest" that's so densely packed with trees that it's dark even during the day That makes little sense given that all the flora in a forest needs the sun in order to live so the idea is not very realistic, but what's the most dense and darkest you've seen a forest get? Any you've been to or know about
In dark rainy weather I've had some dark moments on the steep back sides of hills, it's not even that it's dark it's just that you perceive it as dark because the trunks of trees are often dark and the wet ground is dark. picrel is a sunny day in a shady spot, you can imagine if the sky was dark how dark it'd feel in there.
>>2631803It's not that unrealistic. Very little light reaches the forest floor in tropical rain forests. Some of plants that live there make good house plants.
Once youve been in a triple canopy, you'll get it
>thick trunk, low canopy, dense deciduous forestNever saw this IRL
>>2631803This concept is literally what gave the "Black Forrest" of Germany it's name. like >>2631820 said you still see it in the Amazon and some of the few other mostly wild places on the Earth. All you need is for a few large trees to out-compete the other nearby vegetation. As they get bigger their branches form a canopy. The big trees still get enough light for their chloroplasts because their leaves are illuminated, and they get the added benefit of killing smaller trees that would be competing for soil and water by denying them sunlight.
>>2632037Because the original logfags cut them all down 150 years ago.
>>2631803it's quite real, are you daft?look at any reprod forest, when the trees are young and there's no canopy all manner of weeds take over (here it's blackberry), then as the trees mature they choke out the light and the understory dies out.my property was clear cut by Weyerhaeuser in like 2014, and it's a jungle. just a few hundred feet over is BLM land that has 100+ year old trees, and the only thing on the forest floor are mushrooms (love me some morels)
>>2631803Just drove back home from Hocking Hills yesterday and I saw a couple small areas of the forest like this. I had to take off my sunglasses to make sure it was real. I couldn't make out any sunlight at all the trees were so plentiful and dense.
>>2631803There's a growth near me that is stupid dark due to how close all the trees were planted together, there is no real vegetation on the floor. Wife hates it because every time we drive by it, I tell her if you take one step into those woods you'll get raped
>>2632236What is wrong with you?
>all those old paintings and folk and fairy tales of deep dark woods throughout Europe's history>we'll never get to see them because dumbasses logged them for firewood and construction centuries agoWe were robbed
>>2632263>born too late to explore deep, dark forests>born too early to explore deep, dark forests>born just in time to eat aspartame
>>2632280>>2632263Amazon still exists (for now).
>>2632252I'm about thirty pounds over weight.I drink too much.About 900 in debt.I neglected my garden this season.
>>2632283Amazon isn't going anywhere
my favorite place in the forest as a kid was a place where the short pines where very thick with branches and the larger trees growing above were as well because it made a bright sunny day look and feel like a cool, dark one. almost nothing grew on the floor of the forest in this area because it was rarely penetrated with light. kind of magical, that forest was. not far beyond the dark area it cleared out a bit and was home to some giant rocks that were fun too climb. beyond that was a clearing with a stream running through it.I want to go back, bros.
>>2632280Why wouldn't they just make the eye portion of the emoji the glasses?
>>2631803I grew up near a cedar forest and it's spookier'n horsecocks. no ground vegetation at all, but still too thick to walk through without getting snarled and scratched and having your eyes poked out by all the dead twigs. No direct sun touches the ground either.I never got a proper photo but the edge of this forest is just ahead and to the left in the pic
>>2631803The word you are looking for is canopy.
>>2632037>>2632130They say that when whites first came to the americas the eastern deciduous was so tall a man could ride a horse beneath without a branch knocking off his hat.
>>2632263https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercynian_Forest
>>263226380% of New England had been cleared as farmland by 1850. Nowadays the forest almost everywhere is recovering as large scale agriculture has mostly moved away by the 1940s or so.This results in odd distributions and clumping of tree and plant species, and tons of shitty doghair forests which kill biodiversity. My local woods is about 100 years old (since the farm stopped farming and the forest began to reclaim) and it finally has some nice biodiversity and a decent canopy, but it's far away from stabilizing the way old growth had, centuries really.
Are there any forests with trees like pic rel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tp3iL72wy4Ahttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIs0W0IQsosWe were robbed
>>2632280>aspartame?
When I was in the army we did night training in a jungle in Malaysia. Not sure which one but it was fucking dark. At night it was so dark you couldn't see your own hand when it was 2 inches in front of you. Completely pitched black nothingness. Had to sleep body to body with other men for warmth. Couldn't tell who was who. Didn't know which direction we were moving. After a while like this you start hallucinating. One night we slept in 3 feet of water with our bodies pressed together. I sometimes still have dreams of this experience.
>>2632855Trees only grow like that in the open. At most these could exist sporadically in some young growth forest that have taken over an old field.
>>2631803sounds like a bad dream I had once. the forest was a densely packed shadow realm or sorts, where anything that enters disappears into a darkness of eternity
>>2633011I wish that forest was real, and nearby.
>>2631803>That makes little sense given that all the flora in a forest needs the sun in order to live so the idea is not very realisticNot all forests have small flora and shrubs, and also not all small flora and shrubs need lots of sunlight.
>>2633009>Had to sleep body to body with other men for warmth.Holy shit that's gay, especially since you could have just come prepared instead.
>>2633041fellas, is it gay to do what is necessary to survive?
>>2632855That's England, my country.There are trees like it scattered everywhere but they're always standing alone, only saved from logging because they're in the field.As my country has been developed over these few thousand years the arcane spirit of the land has long been snuffed out, the horrific and wild beasts that are still seen in American forests were replaced by civilized ferries, who themselves are now being pushed out.I often think about how this landscape would have felt when every tree looked like that oak.Today whenever you go inna English woods it's just a plot of trees owned by some guy, it is beautiful of course but with something missing.https://youtu.be/Th6EOlLK0DA
>>2632758Thick Douglass Fur planted forestry is my favorite for a spooky time
>>2633392yeah there's a few sprawling stands of those in my town. in perfect orderly lines, never really got into them to explore though, would be fun
>>2633375>only saved from logging because they're in the field.They also are like that only because they're on the field.>when every tree looked like that oak.They never did.Oaks in a forest grow tall, slim and relatively straight.
>>2633392Based
>>2631803>fictional fantasy setting>realisticHmmm
>>2633413>has never felt the ancestral calling of Tolkien or Egill
>>2631803any temperate or tropical rainforest is pretty dark.Not like "need a torch" dark, but enough that you're definitely going to take your sunnies off.Specifically NZ and PNG in my experience.
>>2633364you weren't surviving though. you could have just brought warmer blankets but you opted to cuddle your bros instead
>>2633535In a military training you bring what you're ordered to bring,
>>2631803I've seen a few. It's not common in the US because most old growth has been cut down. Even in younger forests it gets plenty dark and the plants that grow under the canopy are adapted to heavy shade like ferns, jack in the pulpit, and trilliums. In the really dark forests nothing really grows under the trees.
>>2633375>As my country has been developed over these few thousand yearsis English your native language? Anyway, England is about 1,100 years old.
>>2633550so the guy who was giving you orders was a fag and trying to faggotize his men, I see...either that or he doesn't know how to check a weather forecast
>>2633553the language isn't even
>>2632855nohttps://youtu.be/tEAfFq3gb30?t=815
>>2632290Other than the weight issue what are you actually complaining about because the rest are non issues
>>2631803Dude I love forests like that, that is my home.
>>2632767America was known for it's open plains. The natives deforested the absolute fuck out of America.
>>2634343this is a truly special kind of misinformation
>>2631803OP confirmed for never having walked in a climax forest. This is sad.
>>2633478Do you think lotr actually happened, or?
>>2631803it can get very dark, the living leaves are up high at the top and below that dead leaves and all sorts of debris are accumulating in standing dead branches like thatch on a roof with the ground beneath being very bare and dry, really dead-like. this is not common in temperate broadleaf forests but can happen in conifers and subtropical/tropical with many climbing vines smothering plants without them decomposing.
>>2632767>>2634343The first colonists used to say a squirrel could go from the Atlantic to the Mississippi without touching the ground.
>>2631803If you go far enough into this shit before the leashader in fall it will get dark enough that not much grows on ground level. The Spanish moss makes it even shadier. Spooky woods in general in this particular place.
>>2634630You can see on the left in this pic how the undergrowth is getting shaded out and how dark it gets under there.
>>2634630Leaves drop*
>>2634343The famously industrial American Indians.....
>>2633402>>2633375Also that one is likely a pollard, which many trees in open country were. Commoners need dat wood.
>>2633402>insert OrangeManLipsWrong.gif
>>2633010What happens is that a tree stalls in the understory growing roots, large trees fall down around it and open up columns of light, then the small tree dominates that column until it stands above the other trees, once a tree dominates the canopy it will grow to massive size even in dense woods.. but it has to be a long lived tree like live oak etc. Although you are generally correct that trees in the open or on the edge of a wood will be bigger and more robust than those elsewhere. >>2633552In much of the US, old growth has not been removed from most low lying areas because there is nothing profitable to do with those places usually.
>>2634728Doesn't look like much of a forest to me, the closest trees to that one appear to be pretty small and 50+ feet away. The fence shows what has happened - this was a pasture with one big tree but the rest has been allowed to grow up. That big tree will eventually get shaded out by the taller ones behind it and slowly die off.>>2634729Yes but when that small tree gets a bit of light it shoots up like a rocket to compete, it doesn't grow outward. Trees grow wide like that instead of tall when there isn't anything tall near them.
>>2634842Lol even shaded trees don't just die off, growth is just limited by how much light it receives. And that tree is on the edge of a fairly large grove of oaks and hickory back to the right, the fence is the edge of a wood that has never been cut at least not for about 200 years that I can say for sure. But it is true that the tree is on a southern edge and gets more light than others. Also when trees get a column of light they do shoot up, but once the main crown starts dominating the canopy they will then start growing out- more total branches/bramch size is what determines the lower stem diameter. A big multistem live oak will never really do that bit a single stem will. I've got a big single stem in mind I'll take a picture of tomorrow if the thread is still up.
>>2632855Big Texas and Virginia live oak grow like that when they get really old. The big oak in South Carolina is my favorite.
>>2634574that wasn't due to trees, that was due to stuff like river cane or native bamboos
>>2634910Check out this big bitch
This thread ruined forests for me, I always thought I just don't live in the right area and that's why the forests were meh compared to the cultural idea of one
>>2634996Nah you just live in the wrong place, there are amazing forests In the world.
>>2634996It's ok, the more you learn about them the more interesting and loveable they get. You can even embrace the worldwide romanticism of them so long as you have some knowledge to ground you. Even the recent and mucked about ones are great in some ways. Everyone knows England is deforested and fucked over massively with no wild place left, but even many of our small woods are lovely and their natural and human use history is fascinating. And there are countries with ecologically much more impressive woods.
>>2634914You are impressively ignorant.
>>2634729>grow to massive size even in dense woodsYes. But the trunk will be as straight as a rail and all the branches will be >30 feet up. Very much unlike Anon's pic.
>>2634704Slash and burn ag isn't exactly easy on the forests.
You guys ever been up to Sitka? Step ten feet into those woods and feel the foreboding. Darker than a fried chicken joint in DC.If you're a reader, get The Sea Runners by Ivan Doig, it's a hair raiser about some "seven year men" (indentured servants) trying to escape the Russian fort at New Archangel in a stolen Tlingit canoe. Helps if you've been in the area but Doig is a solid writer.
>>2631803Yes. There are dense pine forests that block out all other vegetation with the needles on the ground. They grow so tight that the light is completely diffused so you can't see the sun unless it's over head and the density of the trees and the needles on the ground severely dampen all sound and cut all wind so the forest feels incredibly still and foreboding. The density and uniformity of the growth and the dry spongey needles make it easy to get lost. You don't leave an easily discernable path and you have no distinct visual cues to orient yourself. It would not be wise to venture deeply into such a forest. I have been in a few and I knew well enough to keep on the periphery.
>>2636483>Pic related
Not 100% related, but some of you guys might enjoy this video, especially if you live in the Northeast.https://youtu.be/zcLQz-oR6sw?si=ipEoif5qGasLNP6tThis video has a lot of great simple observations to watch for when you're in Northeast forests that can pretty easily tell you about the history of the forest. If you have a short attention span skip to 6:18 and see the first example with pillows and cradles if you want a neat example.I would imagine that many of the concepts here apply to forests around the world, although they may not be as pronounced as they are in New England.
>>2636483I have a few spots like that and I love it. Super spooky and those areas are always littered with gnawed-up bones and whatnot from coyotes. Gotta watch your back all the time in there.Here's a wintchry pic peering into one of the pine groves
>>2636488Also here are some photos I've taken, although they don't quite get as dark as what OP is looking for.
>>2636490This one is cheating a bit - was late in the day
>>2636490
>>2636493Haha, nice>>2636492This is way harder to find photos of than I thought, as someone else said these aren't really super dark on the inside, they only provide the illusion that it is
>>2636497
>>2636498Last one, from the PNW
>>2636499I'm in New England and have this >>2632758 spooky cedar forestpic is me and friends wandering through at night in late winter. good shit
forgivey-ness please for the overshooped photo, I just got Lightroom finally and am enjoying some of the effects >>2636500
try watch the harry pothead movies idk maybe they have some good english forests im guessing that where you will find it. or maybe old growth in france or denmark, slovakia too.heres a shot of a forest near me
>>2634114Do you want to be raped?
>>2631803In Sweden a special kind of forest is called "trollskog" or literally "troll-forest" (troll meaning either trolls, or magic, thus either "forest of the trolls" or "magical forest") where all of the ground is covered in thick moss, and the trees are left to their own devices, often growing together at the top so that very little sunshine comes through (and only at the sun's zenith during the day, so 80% of the day is very dark in there)
>>2637595I think it's really only possible where you have mostly confier forests. Alot of understory plants in a hardwood forest function by getting shielded during the hot months by the canopy and then once leaves drop they get sunlight in fall and early spring when it is not as harsh. Do you get a pretty robust understory even in a dense wood. The exception would be a live oak bottomland in the deep south where the oaks keep their leaves year around. Those trees get massive like on the movies and that landscape can be unreal when the Spanish moss is thick.
>>2634630This will look wild on a full moon and a bit of fog
>>2637603When you get out there in it, it is like being on another planet. Water stands there from about November to May. If you get out in it during November there is literally nothing in the undestroy. It is wall to wall like that for about 80 acres.
>>2632037>>thick trunk, low canopy, dense deciduous forest>Never saw this IRLKinda wish it was ngl.
>>2632959Synthetic Sugar
>>2632849not bad
>>2634996Brit hands types this. Sure they don't look like the stuff in fantasy books but you can still get lost very easily in north american forests, tradeoff is minimal humans and more luscious growth and fauna.
>>2638238Which fantasy book, Shrek?On a serious note Shrek had some great looking forests, at least in concept art
>>2638268
>>2638229We can make them, we have the technology
>>2638270Live Oak bottomland checks most of the boxes. Except they are basically evergreen
How to get forest gf
>>2638270GMO thick bussy trees
>>2638268More the old style hand drawn Disney movies and animation from that era with beautiful background shots.
>>2635000temperate rainforest best forest
>>2639769I couldn't disagree less
>>2638828Go to forestFind girlmake friends with girlmake girl friends with girlvoila - forest girl friend
>>2639776that's not how to greentecks anon
>>2639777Do I look like IGAF?
>>2639778no :<
>>2631803you've clearly not even begun looking into how the amazon or congo rainforests work or how they look from the perspective of someone on the forest floor. something like 75% of the life in the amazon is in the canopy and below the soil, you're not on ground level, you're submerged several hundred feet into the ecosystem if you're standing on dirt in the amazon. and reminder that 60% of that remains undocumented and unexplored. uncontacted tribes who speak in monkey calls still regularly fill outsiders with 4 foot long arrow-spears from total stealthalso places like this exist all over eastern europe with typical hardwood species. they didn't get the idea for the typical dracula setting from nowhere, Romania is literally that spooky dark forest the moment you get off the planegod only knows what china and parts of asia are hiding in terms of forests and hidden natural treasures
>>2631803I can literally go find this setting anywhere off the beaten trails at one of my most touristy, litter-covered normie hiking destinations in my state. fungal and animal biodiversity instantly shifts from nothing into this pristine rainforest-like ecosystem in line with nature. you just have to find where the covid-rewilding people aren't throwing their mike's hard lemonade cans
>>2631803new zealand, anon
>>2639782Neither should you
As a desert dweller any forest is appealing to me
>>2631803you can find this kind of climate literally 15 minutes outside of seattle right off the side of either highway corridor, it doesn't even matter which one you pick
>>2639809didn't a rothschild try to go live with them a while ago and get eaten or something?
>>2632863Couldn't you somewhat replicate the old growth conditions if you leave a certain amount of spaced out trees standing after a harvest?
Learn how exposure works
>>2640675That's a decent way to start- it's what they call Plantation Forestry or specialty forestry. You plant a stand of native trees (for me it would be maybe Longleaf Pine) and once they get mature you slowly thin them out and progressively open up that canopy for native hardwood seedlings while removing the fast growing pioneers etc. The problem with this is that you are still skipping the organic process... irl it took a gradual decline of species after the ice age climate change and the slow emergence of some original "equilibrium" which gave way to some new equilibrium as trees die, drop leaves, branches etc. and informs a unique soil profile which is itself a feedback cycle of unimaginable complexity, not to mention the pollinators feedback cycles etc etc.So where I live, Sweet Gum is going to pioneer anything that gets clear cut. I have to assume after the ice age, it was a slow change in the profile of the hardwoods and there was never some big massive repopulation of pioneering Sweet Gums all at once.. even though there were probably quite a few here and there.Based on seeing enough virgin woods I could maybe do a decent job approximating what should stay or go when you are selectively removing seedlings.. but I could NEVER replicate that exact profile of certain trees on certain soil etc etc in any one location. It is actually mind numbing to consider the complexity of factors and sheer amount of time involved. And even then you could do this for what? Maybe 50 acres at most? A tiny area and even that would take more than a lifetime much less literally thousands of years to do it naturally.
>>2637336He does, he's just shy is all.
>>2632263You weren't robbed, you sold it all for petty collectivist reasons to people you should have overthrown. You gave it up and now you'll live with the consequences. An over abundance of each other. >>2632855This gum is as side as that but taller. The more gums burn the bigger they can get so you wind up with a wide dispersal of them. It's weird to think that there's more uninterrupted continuous forest here than in all of europe.
>>2633554I'd say that is more about preparing the troops to survive in more adverse conditions. You can't leave the battlefield just because it started rqining and you got a bit cold.
>>2641455Large portiond of Australia are untouched, so I hate to knock it? but it is sort of a barren place.. and even the places that aren't barren don't get lush because if you go an inch under the soil they ARE still a barren wasteland. The closest you are going to get to big giant oaks like in the anons pic is the southern live oak. They routinely reach "fantasy" proportions and there are stands of them. They just don't get as tightly packed as you see in the movies etc.
>>2641473'Mostly barren' but mostly of an absolutely massive land area.
>>2638270>>2638229You can go to Hokkaido in winter and there are some pretty big deciduous trees that you kinda ski amongst the canopy because the snow can be so deep in places. They get these huge snow formations in them too, it's kino. I've seen the same thing in a willow forest that had a large flood which left 6 feet of silt in this huge river flat, all the big willow branches were coming out of the silt on cool angles like willows do, it looked amazing. I think look for an old growth willow forest, you might find something cool there.
>>2641480
>>2641455>>2641476It's insane that the tallest tree In New Zealand is a Eucalyptus and some of the fattest tree's I've ever seen in NZ are Eucalyptus's too, granted that I haven't been to the North Island and seen the Giant Kauri trees. There are some gigantic Eucalyptus trees here that have trunks as thick as the Big Cedars and Firs I remember from the PNW, but these massive Gums can only have been here for 180 years and they are bigger than 500 year old native hard woods. I can only imagine some of the Monsters that grow in their homeland.
>>2641476Only a fool would think literally the entire place is barren but generally speaking I stand by that analysis of the place. Like in Mongolia you can take a picture and it looks beautiful but you go an inch under the soil and realize *most of it* it is actually a wasteland. I think it is largely a precipitation thing. Anyways I'm not knocking the place everywhere has its appeal but "lush" is not a word that comes to mind.
>>2641485Australia has a band of forest that runs all the way from the southern tip on the east coast to the northen tip, ranging from temperate to tropical, it's fucking lush and the animal life in this band is extremely diverse and you can't walk 100 meters in it without coming across something interesitng. The continent is roughly the same size as a the lower 48 states of the USA dude, If you include Tasmania it's got more "lush" fertile land than New Zealand and you would be an absolute fool not to call NZ lush.
This little fucker here is the same size as Vancouver island.
>>2641485You lack a sense of scale and it does you a disservice.
>>2641490>>2641492>>2641490Tasmania looks OK but I'm cruising around the Melbourne area on Google maps right now (and on up around the east coast). The area surrounding mebourne seems to have considerable vegetation but honestly I'm not particularly blown away with what I'm seeing. As I said earlier I do not expect the continent would be totally devoid of all forests etc., but it does in fact appear to be few and far between. There is a pocket around the southeast and a few bands running up the coast. That is literally about it. Lol also I am perfectly familiar with the scale of Australia lol where did I ever even mention the size of it? All I said is that the vast majority of it is a barren wasteland- which is true. I am also currently looking at a precipitation map of the wasteland continent.
>>2641547Tasmania definitely BTFO's where every you're from. I've been to brisbane and the surrounding areas, the forests there compete with where I've been in NZ, which are definitely comparable to anywhere on earth. The Melbourne area was heavily deforested. Yes Australia is a desert, that doesn't mean it isn't lush with life. It was actually very green once but the early aboriginals burned down so much forest in the interior that it changed the climate and forests stopped regenerating and drawing in rain cloud.
>>2635126It was a combination of the both. Trees in forests and uplands, canes in the bottomlands.
>>2631803>WHAT IS A CANOPY
>>2631803OP have never been /out/ in his entire life. Not even once. He never met someone who did.
>>2641651see >>2641211Setting aside the fact your eyes would adjust and you'd see just fine inside, you can literally see sunlight through the trunks in the distance meaning it's not so thick to block out the sun completely on the ground
>>2631806very cozy
>>2632751can't ye?
>>2634729>In much of the US, old growth has not been removedu wot m8?
>>2635000where is that?
>>2641485Mongolia has the chinese and has always been barren plains. It's also polluted everywhere that matters. Real sad. That's like comparing antarctica to the tundra.>>2641547 The melbourne area IE right next to one of 3 giga population centetrs of the whole nation.That's before you get to the mega forests of southern WA, or the Pilbaras arid africa analogues. Then you've got the massive rainforests of QLD and all of the top ends congo tier insanity. Tasmania is an obvious choice simply because it's the size of ireland with none of the comparitive populations of anywhere on earth. Siberia is less population dense than here. 16 percent of the nation is forest. Some put it at 147million hectares. That's considering that of europes total 160mill includes plantation and having people all over it and running around enforcing germany tier rules.+ Relogging. I like scandinavia better.>>2641601They just don't get it. It's the same with Africa. They see the sahara and forget about the congo. Same shit. They come from tiny little envlaces that have nothing left from before structures.Picrelated is part of the great dividing range. Keep in mind what other anon posted at>>2641490>>2641492>>2641494Does not include the top end, the interior africa mode forests or the mountains from NSW and VIC alone. Much of it unfucked with too. They can't even build a trainline across the centre never mind actually pushing through the range.
>>2632855Yes, Dartmoor has a small forest like that, but its full of neopagan hippies because they believe the moss there is magical
>>2641729People on here post about there being no bugs and no noise in their forests man, freaking hell I slept in a tent on the sunshine coast and couldn't think when the birds got going in the morning. There is so much life in that forest its insane. Pick up a random stick and there are ants gone all the way up your arm and down to your asshole in 2 seconds.
>>2641687Somewhere in NZ, no idea where but there is a lot of stuff that looks like that here. Very wet bush.
>>2631803Stumble trip! Stumble trip! Stumble trip!
>>2641797Me and two frens would traipse through bullshit woods and swamps in the dark all the time, and we all struggled but only the fatty-boom-batty would stumbletrip. And boy would he ever!
>>2641766Once you adapt to not having a constant rumble of highway noise the bush is quite loud at times. You get everything from cicadas, to squawking birds, to small mammals and snakes fucking off into the grass, to koalas and brushtails grunting like idiots at night. I dunno how anyone thinks it's always quiet."No bugs" must be a bit of wishful thinking.
>>2641766I camped out in Yengo a couple years ago and same shit. The dawn chorus was a nice racket and the birds really got intense when the monitor lizards started prowling around. I found an ant mound that was about 1m tall and 2m wide and poked it with a stick like a dumbass. The whole ground came alive and they flanked me almost immediately and by the time I got back to camp my wool were covered in ants clinging and biting around my ankles. Almost flammenwerfed the whole area
>>2634423nta no but Tolkien took a lot of inspiration from ancient European sagas and myths
>>2641766Yeah that's when you get to the point of explaining earplugs aren't just for the noise but for the bugs too. I hammock more nowadays but I think that's why being an early riser is useful. Well that and waking up in muggy heat. QLD is a lost world and so is TAS. One is cannibal land the other is spiky bullshit that looks gorgeous. Love em both.
>>2632037That's a shame.
>>2641927ah knew I had a pitcher. every one of those black & purple blots is a fucking hellant
>>2631803Compare to OP pic
>all those children's books, games, cartoons lied, there are no forests like this
>>2641684that map is a lie, I know as a fact that parts of the Colorado San Juans have never been touched.
>>2642336It'd be quite bright and sunny if you took a pic inside it
>>2632037
>>2639809>god only knows what china and parts of asia are hiding in terms of forests and hidden natural treasuresI think they found or claimed to have found the second tallest tree in the world in China, and there are more huge ones in the Malaysian rainforest.
>>2642043Imagine the smell
>>2644146It is not particularly bright in there. Kek I mean it's still daytime obviously- no wood is going to be just like pitch black dark, but it gets dark enough in there that outside of the edges, the undergrowth gets fairly sparse. I'll try to go take a pic in there after work though.
>>2634704You don't need to be quite yet 'industrial' to cause major damage. Euros did it before then, megafauna were made basically extinct when humanity was still all tribal. Industrialization just makes it piss easy to keep up.But anyways the natives were carving aqueducts and building temples, they had the resources.
>>2634343>America is one biomeretard
and abnormally still autumn night allowed for this pitcher
I think that most trees could do with being a little bit bigger, personally.
>>2644154I've heard people compare it to a warmer pacific north west with just a little less rain. Way less people though.
I've been thinking about this post and looking at forests near me. I think I've found a few where I could make a video on a sunny day that would be washed out during in the field. Then I walk into the forest and it would be black while the autosaturation kicks in. It's not "black", but it's a good deal darker then out in the sun. And these forests were all fields back in the 40s and 50s. Of course, it's going to rain for the next month.
>>2631803are you from the east coast? pnw has forests like that. sure the trope is exagerated but it exists
>>2631806>>2641668Why do we have an instinct to feel comfort in a dark forest?
>>2646829I think there is a specific sort of image of a deciduous broadleaf type forest -particularly oak- that comes to mind in alot of fantasy fiction etc. Usually thick trunked gnarled oaks packed tightly together. This is probably inspired by what people imagine some primordial broadleaf woodland of the British isles, France or parts of Germany etc. would have looked like. The amount of fantasy and fiction harkening back to this particular setting is extensive. The famous forests of the PNW, with their almost alien appearance, fern cover and conifer trees of stupendous size etc., may be perhaps single most stunning woodland in the world, but they are not really the same type of image I assume OP is referring to. Imo you'd have to look for broadleaf (specifically oak-heavy forests). As most old growth like this no longer exist in europe (and less and less in the new world), your best bet would still probably be the mid Atlantic or South Eastern United States at this point.
>>2646835Well where I live it is hot and humid as fuck for half the year so I feel a great deal of comfort getting my ass out of the sun tbqh.
>>2646836Bingo
>>2632283Not quite the same since it's full of deadly bugs, killer fish and jungle rot.
>>2646844The natural place to look is at the largest thickest oak tree in the world- the southern live oak, and it commonly grows in dense stands.Or it might seem more natural to look for these types of woodlands in the place which inspired the famous depictions in the first place- the British Isles, parts of France, or parts of Germany? Surely there must be some examples of old growth there?
Another thing that I notice in these depictions of forests is the undergrowth. Very thick herbaceous ground cover - grasses, moss and the like - with very few saplings and all that twiggy weedy shit that dominates the floor of modern forests. They seem really nice to walk through without worrying about getting ticks or chiggers.In north america earthworms are largely responsible for destroying a lot of the herb layer in our forests. They're not native here and they kill a lot of the native forest plants.
>>2636493"THOMASIIIN!"
Here, in Maine, in the areas with the heavy mix of pine and deciduous, it can get pretty dark. Not like night, but enough that if you are camping deep, off the trails, it gets like night well before sunset and after sunrise. But it's never oppressive as Mirkwood is described. Just peaceful - though sound travels weird, really weird.
>>2647333whenever a friend introduces me to their cat or dog I always lean close to their ears and ask them if they'd like to live deliciously.I don't know why I do this.
>>2631803I go hiking in the rainforest and it's incredibly dark hours before sunset.
>>2641547You'd basically want the grampians in the west, there's also some nice areas on the far east coast but it's quite remote.>>2633009known a few lads out of Butterworth, their stories of jungle training always sounded fucking rough, i do a casual mountain hike here and I'm drenched in sweat an hour in, cant imagine doing it with full kit
>>2631803You've never been in an actual forest, only an ephemera successional phase one. Apex forests are dominated by large trees that fill the canopy and shut out any understory, only interrupted by windblow or fires or whatnot.
>>2631803>so densely packed with trees that it's dark even during the day>what's the most dense and darkest you've seen a forest get?so densely packed with trees that it's dark even during the day.the trees survive, thier uppermost branches can get light, thing son the ground cannot, and only little ferns and moss lives in the dark woods, and mushrooms.
>>2631803europe's forests are young, scandinavia was a barren pasture until 50 years ago
>>2634574the squirrels had wings, but devolved
>>2649922But surely in France/Germany/British Isles there are *some* ancient heavily oak woodlands left, akin to eastern North American forests.
>>2634996don't feet bad, most of those forests were invented 9000 years ago, before that it was just big chunks of ice in europe
>>2636484looks comfy, i'd become the god emperor of that forest
>>2649925no, as far as i know all forests in europe were managed forests, either for wood or for hunting, unlike now the countryside was packed with people, and they tried to squeeze any value from the land that they could, a lot of second sonds with nothing better to do, now cities just absorb people like cattle, but before they spread through the countryside instead
>>2649925Most forests in the UK were cut down by humans during the late paleolithic. The closest you have to old growth would be the New Forest, instigated by William in 1066.
>>2649934https://www.thenewforest.co.uk/explore/new-forest-heritage/seems like a hunting forest, those forests were managed too, cleared so you could go with horses, artificial glade created to attract game, ...
>>2649935>seems like a hunting forestIt was exactly a hunting forest.
>>2649926The fine complex balance that constitutes an ancient "forest" is probably something that emerged from the climactic disruption caused of the end of the ice age. My history isn't very good though but I assume that was what 10-12k years ago? The time of the paleolithic? So that is sort of the "maximum" age of any given woodland. Anyways, even if a forest is not virgin, per se, the question is, has it been disrupted to the point of being a major departure from what it's natural state and balance would be.
>>2649950Sorry, meant for>>2649934
>>2646886>the southern live oakThe trunk is perfect but the leaves are very small so you don't get a dense canopy
>>2649981When they are mature (but before they get old) they fill out really thick and dense. Once they get over the hill they start to thin. The other thing about Southern Live Oak is that, while called live oaks, they are actually only borderline evergreen. They thin for a few months but never truly drop leaves at once.
>>2631803Glock 17. It has a 17 round capacity and should be good for everything up to and maybe including grizzlies. If you can't kill a bear with that many rounds you really deserve to be mauled.
Guaramiranga, Brazil. I took this photo while high. I felt a strong sensation of something calling me to the deep woods. I like this dense and black forest concept.
>>2632263Counterpoint: Those trees became the very ships that allowed Europeans to conquer the known world. Sure, forests are kino. But the story of European imperial might is ludokino
>>2631803Here in tassie rainforest. Sometimes I get disoriented hiking or driving through the really dense parts out west, thinking I lost track of time and it's already dark.
>>2642520thats not real you idiot
>>2649986Just realized- to my everlasting shame- that I already posted this pic.
>>2650049>My ancestors killed everybody and destroyed everything they touched. SO EPICno
