Leonardo da Vinci and A. E. Douglass

So, what do da Vinci and Andrew Ellicott Douglass have in common? I ran across an article in TIME, Tree Clocks, about Florence Hawley's study of tree ring growth that started with this, "Leonardo da Vinci seems first to have noticed that widths of tree rings vary in wet and dry years..."

This was so interesting that I forgot to read the rest of the article and even had to do a search to find the article again so I could add the name of the researcher to this post. As usual, I was off on another mission.

I found two quotes from da Vinci's writings, but no where can I find what texts these quotes came from. I will pursue this and post an update. Anyway, here are the quotes:

“Rings in the branches of sawed trees show the number of years and, according to their thickness, the years which were more or less dry. Thus, they reflect the individual worlds to which they belong, in the north [of Italy] they are much thicker than in the south.”

"The rings in cut stems (or branches) show their number of years, as well as those years that were moister or dryer, according their larger or smaller width."

You never know when you'll learn about another area of science that Leonardo da Vinci investigated and wrote about.

Back to what da Vinci and Douglass have in common--tree rings. Douglass is considered to be the founder of modern dendrochronology. We'll be writing a profile of A.E. Douglass over on The Coconino Chronicles and I'll try to post the link to that when I get it up.