Along the Bronx River bike trail – on the Yonkers side, of course – I often stop to admire this enormous sleeping water buffalo. I can attest that for the last 30 years it’s been snoozing through every season, oblivious to the joggers, bikers, baby carriages, and walkers passing by. But despite its endless somnolence, it makes me feel safe. Somehow, I know it can sense what’s going on around it. It’s really a guardian. If something bad were about to happen, it would rise up and protect us.
Nature’s Shapes
But there I go again, anthropomorphizing the natural world. It’s not a buffalo head, but a magnificent burl – a bulbous protrusion that most often grows at the base of a tree, but can also appear higher up. Burls near the ground connect to the root system and, like the statues on Easter Island, extend underground. They sometimes form when a tree tries to heal itself after an injury, but the tissue runs amok and turns in on itself in a tight knot, forming a callus that can continue to grow for the life of the tree. As seen in the photo, some burls have eyes.
Burls can be valuable and are often sought after by wood turners and carvers, who love the intricacies of the grain. I sometimes imagine that an evil woodworker, lurking in the forest, will hack my buffalo’s head off and drag it to his spooky lair to shape into a forbidding creature…I really need to stop this.
Another Tree Growth–the Gall
Many people confuse burls with another form of uncontrollable tree growth called crown galls, a kind of tree tumor caused by bacteria in the soil. When the bacteria invade the tree, it can cause burl-like growth in injured areas.
Burls and galls can have similar pathologies, but a burl is essentially harmless. Galls, however, are more like tree cancers. The infection triggers uncontrolled growth. Galls can occur anywhere on a tree, the tissue is less dense than burl tissue and more susceptible to decay and insect infestations. There can be multiple galls on a tree, and they tend to weaken trees and stunt their growth, but generally don’t rapidly kill them.
Winter is a great time to look for burls and galls. Check them out in Tibbets or along the Old Croton Aqueduct.
It’s December 4, 2025, the year is winding down. In my next installment, which will be the last of the year, I’ll talk more about this water buffalo tree. It’s a beautiful white oak. There are majestic white oaks throughout Yonkers. They are my favorite trees in our City.
This story is the seventh in a bimonthly series about trees in Yonkers. If any reader knows of a particular tree that they feel is worthy of an exposé, please contact me through the Yonkers Ledger at phil.zisman@theyonkersledger.com
