Talk:Buttress root

What is missing here...

What is missing here is that buttress roots are under tension, not compression forces. If one saws into a buttress root, for example, as is often done by Amazonian caboclos (river dwellers) in order to obtain wood for a canoe paddle, the buttress root opens. The often-cited analogy with a baroque-style cathedral's flying buttress is misleading, and a better analogy would be with the steel cables that attach to a tower and act as guidewires. Why can I not find a citation to this simple fact so that it can be included in the article? --Wloveral (talk) 02:00, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

That's a really interesting point, Wloveral. I had no idea that was the case. I've been around buttress roots quite a bit, but have never noticed the result of cutting one. Very counter-intuitive! I'll check, too, to see if I can locate a citation. Tim Ross (talk) 15:08, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, it wasn't too hard to find literature on the subject, although it tends to be pretty highly technical and hard to follow at times. A good one is here. As far as I understand it, you get both tension and compression, in more-or-less equal measure, on opposite sides of a tree, depending upon the stress of the moment. On reflection, this seems perfectly logical to me. Tim Ross (talk) 15:29, 3 May 2009 (UTC)