The Language of Trees

As we sailed under the canopy of leaves we saw the sky through its chinks, and, as it were, the meaning and idea of the tree stamped in a thousand hieroglyphics in the heavens.

Leaves are of more various forms than the alphabets of all languages put together; of the oaks alone there are hardly two alike, and each expresses its own character.

Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers