Be like the Arbutus

In July the ground under an arbutus is littered with what look like cinnamon curls. The tree sheds its bark every summer, thin red-brown sheets peeling back and dropping to show a new skin underneath, smooth, pale green and cool to the touch. Over the following months that fresh bark slowly darkens to the rust-red the tree is known for.

Anyone who has walked the rocky shoreline of the Gulf Islands knows the arbutus. It is the tree leaning out over the water at an improbable angle, glossy-leaved in January when the maples are bare.

A tree of dry, difficult places

Arbutus menziesii, called Pacific madrone south of the border, is the only broadleaf evergreen tree native to Canada. Its range runs down the coast from southwestern British Columbia to California. Here it keeps close to salt water, on the east side of Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands and the nearby mainland shore.

It chooses ground most trees refuse: south-facing bluffs, thin soil over bedrock, sites that bake dry from June to September. The leaves are thick and leathery, dark and shiny above and pale underneath, built to hold water through a rainless summer. In spring the tree carries drooping clusters of small white bell-shaped flowers that smell faintly of honey. By autumn those have become orange-red berries, which robins, waxwings and thrushes strip from the branches.

The arbutus belongs to the heath family, which makes it a relative of salal and huckleberry. It grows on the territories of Coast Salish peoples and has a long-held place in their stories and knowledge of this coast.

Shedding as a way of growing

The bark is the obvious lesson. The tree does not hang on to last year's covering. As the trunk and limbs thicken, the old layer splits, curls and falls away, and nothing about the process looks tidy. For a few weeks the tree is a mess of ragged strips. Then it is smooth again.

The leaves follow a similar pattern. An arbutus is evergreen, but each leaf lasts little more than a year. In early summer, once the new growth has opened, the older leaves turn yellow and orange and drop. People sometimes worry that the tree is dying. It is letting go of what it has already replaced.

The rest of us tend to add: more clothes, more commitments, more things on shelves. The arbutus grows by subtraction as well. It keeps what is working and drops the rest, every year, without fuss.

Leaning toward the light

Arbutus trunks rarely grow straight. The tree needs sun, so it bends and twists toward any gap in the canopy, which is why so many of them lean out over the shore. The shape of each one is a record of where the light was.

It is also a tree that knows its place. An arbutus resents disturbance at the roots and is notoriously hard to transplant; a sapling dug from the wild will almost always die. Yet cut one down, or let fire take the top, and it will often resprout from the woody burl at its base.

What to take from it

• Shed on a schedule. Once a year, go through the closet and the cupboards and pass along what no longer fits your life. Mend what is worth keeping.
• Choose fewer, tougher things. A leathery leaf outlasts a soft one. Durable fabrics and well-made goods, like those gathered under hand-crafted, ask less of you over time.
• Stay where you grow well. Not every chance to uproot is a good one.
• Turn toward what feeds you, even if it leaves you a little crooked.

If an arbutus grows near your house, the best care is restraint. Leave the fallen bark and leaves where they land, keep the soil around the roots undisturbed and do not water it in summer. More on the thinking behind this site is on the story page.

Go and find one in August. Put your palm flat on the new green bark. It stays cool, even in full sun.