March 5th - Aspen Grove Fairyland
Aspen Grove Fairyland
Everyone knows that an aspen grove is where the fairies live. Their quaking leaves lull wanderers in, mesmerizing them with their whispering wind language. This allows the fairy-kind to more easily play tricks on travelers and steal their shiny things.
But why did aspens evolve to speak with the wind in the first place? It wasn't for the fairies. Aspens were around long before fairies made the scene. No, they did it to use birds for their own nefarious designs.
Amongst the trees, aspens are some of the best at walking, but they aren't quick about it. From a single root system, an aspen slowly sprouts more trunks as it moves in all directions. A single aspen becomes a grove over time and can stretch as far as the eye can see. But it's still just one aspen walking the earth, and a solitary aspen - even one as big as a forest - gets lonely.
One day, a hickory grew in its grove, pushing its massive taproot beneath the sprawling lattice of horizontal aspen roots. Where did the hickory come from? Unlike the aspen, hickories evolved a different strategy for moving about. Producing delicious nuts for the forest mammals and nut cracking birds - hickory seeds were dispersed far and wide. They spread across the land quickly - each trunk an individual, thinking slow thoughts and being mostly anti-social. Unlike the hickories, aspens are naturally extroverted - even when there was just one of them.
After learning the hickory's trick, the aspen began making its own seeds - producing little catkin flowers that pollinate in the wind and become bundles of seeds, easily carried in a bird's beak. The aspen also bleached the underside of its leaves and widened the edges to catch the wind and flutter like a bird. This tricked the stupid birds into thinking that other birds were around. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy for the birds - fooled into thinking there were more birds, more birds came, and whole flocks started showing up to rest their winds and have a protein-rich snack before adventuring on in their frenzied quest to see the whole world.
Anyway, that's how the first aspen grove made another and then another ad infinitum. Eventually, some of them walked far enough to meet each other and started making plans on how to take over the world.
So, while you should be wary of fairies in the aspen groves, it's the trees themselves that want you dead.