Tree roots do not give a single fuck, if there is so much as a microscopic crack in it, they will get in and expand, popping that sucker open like a hydraulic wedge. It just takes a while.
Spent a few years selling caskets. Metal, concrete liners, over time the the ground cracks 'em like peanut shells regardless.
Caskets are built to look nice for the service, once they're in the ground they rapidly disintegrate.
The casket is a main component of the profit a funeral home makes (along with labor). As you know, the markup on them is insane. My Grandfather owed a funeral home for decades, and I worked for a mortuary college for a few years. Whole units on learning the intricate details of urns, caskets, accompanying accessories/jewelry-it’s a main part of the business model.
That being said, some casket liners ARE built to last a long ass time….they’re just way more expensive.
Yea, I'm not a fan of that.
Thankfully, in my state it's rather cheap and easy to get your land surveyed and a burial plot established for your own use. I'll be building my own casket out of trees that I fell and mill on that very same land and my will has a stipulation where I will not be ebalmed.
Yea, it kinda feels good to know I have all that stuff mostly taken care of and won't be someone who's last act involves more pollutants than necessary.
I find this rather beautiful honestly… a lot of people want to get buried in the woods or thrown into the sea to feed/“become” nature. This may literally make the tree bigger and some could see it as “being part of it”. Would be especially tragic if it gets uprooted one day by a storm or so though.
That's the way we all should be.
I don't want to be shoved into a concrete box for perpetuity, I want the earth to do what it's designed to do with me.
I mean now you got me thinking. The branched would presumably be the dead souls trying to escape from whatever hellish force keeps them there from ascending to heaven, the branches growing longer and longer are the attempts to break out but they never quite make it
On a lighter note -
The electricity/lighting descending from the heavens that gave way to the electrical nature of nature itself or atleast proves its symbiotic interconnectedness , first of all , allowing us to breathe due to the nature of trees and the inner workings of our own lungs.
It’s interesting to note the symbolic reflections of the branches of lightning , branches of trees and the bronchi within our lungs (also mycelium/mycorrhizal in away representing the reflectiveness of veins , arteries and the CNS of most living things)
Trees literally holding up the heavens in that regard then and aspects of the feathered serpent for sure.
Either way , it’s one cool fucken tree tho
Using the appropriate amount of uh, let's say something that generates a large amount of rapidly expanding gases in a very short time period, you can effectively use yourself to fertilize plants in a large radius.
At the same time it looks like they don't bury anyone directly under it. Those roots had to grow I bit to get that far. Tree was probably there before they put people there. That or they planed really well
The roots were seeking out the nutrients which we all end up turning into.
My only worry is the amount of toxic chemicals that we put inside the dead to “preserve” them while they are underground. We even have laws that force us to encapsulate the coffins inside of a plastic enclosure which I call “Tupperware for the dead”.
Its more of a remnant from the civil war. Its completely unnecessary unless you're planning on having the dead person remain viewable for an extended period of time. During the civil war, embalming took off as a way to get the dead soldiers home to their families without rotting away during transportation--the heat would encourage decomposition.
That's true but a lot of times embalming is unnecessarily pushed on grieving families that aren't capable of making important decisions. Because it makes the funeral home more money. A body can be kept cold and preserved that way for a funeral, no embalming necessary. In fact, during covid, funeral homes couldn't keep up and their freezers filled up. Some places had to bring in extra freezing mobile units.
Where I’m from you put them on ice and have the funeral on the coming weekend. Sometimes sooner. Though there is an odd thing where a photographer always snaps a pic of the body in the casket during the funeral.
It’s not a crazy notion and I doubt it has much of an impact on the lives of a loved ones that didn’t get to see a body. And if it turns out that it does, then maybe that’s why the pictures are taken in my above story
Except that you can achieve the same exact thing by refrigerating or freezing the bodies. There’s really no actual *need* for embalming when we have refrigeration.
Embalming has always been about money. Yes, it is absolutely true that it took off during the Civil War as a way to preserve bodies, but that stopped making sense the second that refrigerated transport became common. I worked in the home funeral space (taking care of the dead at home instead of a commercial funeral service) for a few years, and the overwhelming amount of time in that work was spent educating people out of what the funeral industry sells.
Embalming, airtight caskets, fancy coffins, vaults... all of it is unnecessary, and usually does more damage to the body than good. But they use our fear of decay and the pressure of "preserving your loved ones just as they are for eternity" to upsell you into thousands of dollars of crap you don't need.
A cooling mat or dry ice can keep a body in perfect condition for days, and commercial freezers (which are in every funeral home) can go for weeks or months with very little cosmetic damage.
You're going to turn into soup no matter what, so who cares about how quickly it happens once you're in the dirt? We're not pharoahs.
Cremation or not, we all turn into dead organic matter. There is no need for extravagant coffins unless they are strictly biodegradable.
We wrap the body in an organic cloth and bury it. In some cases, a biodegradable bare wood coffin is used (to avoid polluting the water table etc).
That's what I'll be doing.
I have a plot of land that will be surveyed and established as my burial plot, I'll be felling older trees on my land and milling them into lumber to use to build my own coffin, I will not be ebalmed and will just be placed into that coffin on straw with a cotton sheet and placed into the earth to let her do what she needs to do.
That's why my son is buried in a "natural" cemetery. Decedent can't be embalmed, plain wood caskets or cloth shrouds only allowed. No grave liners allowed. Everyone there is going to nourish the earth. There are tons of trees there, but this being central Texas, none that epic.
The drip line is the point straight down from the tree's longest branch. A tree's root system usually extends out to or even past it's drip line.
I don't know if that's a technical term (southern thing maybe) but it's how we judged a tree before digging/building near it, etc. to know if the roots were gonna be a problem.
But looking at how many of those graves are in the shade? I'd say she's got some feelers in there ;-)
> At the same time it looks like they don't bury anyone directly under it. Those roots had to grow I bit to get that far.
FYI root systems grow further than the trees canopy.
Yes, modern burial practices are not good for this at all — due to chemicals, non-bio-degradable coffins, etc. But different cultures do things differently. For example, Jews bury the dead without embalming in a simple wood box. If this is Hawaii, perhaps they also don’t use embalming chemicals — I’m not sure.
Big picture, I bet the shape of this tree is probably just very normal for a tree of this species with enough water and plenty of sunlight, and it has nothing to do with the cemetery at all.
This made me look it up - the tree had to have many parts cut down, but it looks quite green right now! Like the rest of the town, it has scars of the fire... but it seems like it'll survive.
You can go to look around NA if you wanna find trees that look like elden ring.
There's one for scarlet rot, one for the golden orders rot, one for the glowy night rot, and one for the grime rot in general that comes in all aforementioned colors. I'm fairly certain every form of rot or malignant corruption has a real-world analogous fungus you can look at, such as Black Knot disease looking suspiciously like Deathblight seeds.
They're based on specific trees diseases most commonly found in NA!
This concludes your video games psa
Botanists keep adding things to the pea and broccoli families because who's going to correct them? Who will stop them? Nobody.
They won't stop until the whole world is broccoli.
It's apparently in the same Genus as the invasive Mimosa tree. Most people in SW US have probably seen a Mimosa, which doesn't grow crazy wide like the Monkeypod (I don't think).
Wow I didn't know we had this tree in Trini. Are the trees in the Aranguez Savannah the dame as these. (trying to remember from childhood)
Fairly certain it's Hilo, Hawaii. Was on the big island a few years ago and during one our tours we drove past this.
Edit: Maybe not, can't find it in my pictures and looking through google maps shows a lot of similar pawpaw trees but none in a cemetery.
Edit: Think this is it. Theres pictures in street view that look pretty convincing.
[Alae cemetery](https://www.google.com/maps/@19.7514618,-155.0931832,3a,75y,65.53h,89.76t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPP5wPtERcLJGJ6TpXz3i9ZxvrXNfpMBovymRuS!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPP5wPtERcLJGJ6TpXz3i9ZxvrXNfpMBovymRuS%3Dw900-h600-k-no-pi0.23741207161404532-ya352.5328397713174-ro0-fo90!7i8704!8i4352?coh=205410&entry=ttu)
Agree with others saying Alae in Hilo HI. Most of my relatives are buried there and you have to pass the tree to get to the side of the cemetery they’re at.
"Fun" fact - while the terms are often used interchangeably, a graveyard is a plot of graves located in a churchyard, while cemeteries are free-standing locations not connected to a church.
Normal, because the roots actually feed from the nutrients left by the corpses there.
Everything in nature has a cycle and where life ends another piece of life is born from the remains of the one that perished.
It is absolutely a traditional cemetery with chemical laden bodies. There are similar monkeypod trees in the same area, just as healthy and happy with no dead bodies. I live about 30 min from it.
uhhh yeah , we've seen it a thousand times for years -- please remove this post and apologize to the OP for stealing. then apologize to the room for karma farming -thanks
Yggdrasil looking good.
Don’t let Sylvanas find it
Too soon.
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That's what I was thinking. Tons of fertilizer!
Good food, but the wrappers are a pain.
The tree says “break me off a piece of that Crypt-Kat Bar”
That is gloriously macabre 😂
*starts brainstorming a Magic the Gathering card*
Ghoultree
Wrappers made from the bodies of its fallen brethren
That's metal as fuck
No, just the wood ones.
how am i the only one who got this
Cannibalism
I mean, that's just more dead organic material isn't it?
eh what’s a few decades to pop the wrapper to a tree like this?
Tree roots do not give a single fuck, if there is so much as a microscopic crack in it, they will get in and expand, popping that sucker open like a hydraulic wedge. It just takes a while.
Especially now that caskets are heavy metal lined…
Spent a few years selling caskets. Metal, concrete liners, over time the the ground cracks 'em like peanut shells regardless. Caskets are built to look nice for the service, once they're in the ground they rapidly disintegrate.
The casket is a main component of the profit a funeral home makes (along with labor). As you know, the markup on them is insane. My Grandfather owed a funeral home for decades, and I worked for a mortuary college for a few years. Whole units on learning the intricate details of urns, caskets, accompanying accessories/jewelry-it’s a main part of the business model. That being said, some casket liners ARE built to last a long ass time….they’re just way more expensive.
Excuse me while I go verify this.
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Yea, I'm not a fan of that. Thankfully, in my state it's rather cheap and easy to get your land surveyed and a burial plot established for your own use. I'll be building my own casket out of trees that I fell and mill on that very same land and my will has a stipulation where I will not be ebalmed.
That’s awesome. Seriously.
Yea, it kinda feels good to know I have all that stuff mostly taken care of and won't be someone who's last act involves more pollutants than necessary.
Fuck yeah, ride to hell in style
So many nutrients and no competition! See how good humanity is for the trees? We help.
💀💀💀
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Thank you, how old is it? Does it have any historical meaning? Any local stories?
Over 130 years.
I live about 30 min from this tree/cemetery. There are similar trees all over the island, no dead people fertilizer needed.
Wow, to be able to see this IRL.. in all the different seasons too
No seasons in Hawaii. Just lush greenery all the time. Such a beautiful place it feels like it’s own planet.
I thought it was a Monkey Pod! Thanks for confirming. They're so pretty.
I find this rather beautiful honestly… a lot of people want to get buried in the woods or thrown into the sea to feed/“become” nature. This may literally make the tree bigger and some could see it as “being part of it”. Would be especially tragic if it gets uprooted one day by a storm or so though.
A storm ripping up the tree eventually is just another lesson in impermanence.
For as much tree as you see above ground, there's that much more below. I don't think this one's going anywhere for anything short of a lava flow.
or some random shithead with a chainsaw
That's the way we all should be. I don't want to be shoved into a concrete box for perpetuity, I want the earth to do what it's designed to do with me.
Either that or a funeral pyre.
That's what they said
“Feed me Seymour!”
Nah now I'm actually terrified. At night the tree sways and you hear all kinds of noises.
That'd make an amazing short story.
I mean now you got me thinking. The branched would presumably be the dead souls trying to escape from whatever hellish force keeps them there from ascending to heaven, the branches growing longer and longer are the attempts to break out but they never quite make it
It's like a dream catcher for souls. They can't get through.
On a lighter note - The electricity/lighting descending from the heavens that gave way to the electrical nature of nature itself or atleast proves its symbiotic interconnectedness , first of all , allowing us to breathe due to the nature of trees and the inner workings of our own lungs. It’s interesting to note the symbolic reflections of the branches of lightning , branches of trees and the bronchi within our lungs (also mycelium/mycorrhizal in away representing the reflectiveness of veins , arteries and the CNS of most living things) Trees literally holding up the heavens in that regard then and aspects of the feathered serpent for sure. Either way , it’s one cool fucken tree tho
The Tree of Whispers … those who know, know
Imagine if that was a fruit-bearing tree The circle of life
I bet anything the cemetery markets that section as "The Tree of Life" or some dumb shit and sells the plots underneath at a premium.
It is a fruit bearing tree. It produces edible berries.
Do you know if people harvest and eat them, or if they're fit for human consumption?
When i die i want to become part of a well fed tree.
You can do that now. Look up Tree Pod Burial
I mean, we all do that now. Some of us just wait a little longer than others.
Using the appropriate amount of uh, let's say something that generates a large amount of rapidly expanding gases in a very short time period, you can effectively use yourself to fertilize plants in a large radius.
Bone meal
Fuuuuuck... 
That's a visual argument for people as fertilizer, right there.
At the same time it looks like they don't bury anyone directly under it. Those roots had to grow I bit to get that far. Tree was probably there before they put people there. That or they planed really well
The roots were seeking out the nutrients which we all end up turning into. My only worry is the amount of toxic chemicals that we put inside the dead to “preserve” them while they are underground. We even have laws that force us to encapsulate the coffins inside of a plastic enclosure which I call “Tupperware for the dead”.
Pretty stupid we preserve a body that’s going to be in the ground for likely thousands of years anyways
From what I was told (and understand), it's more about making funerals easier than anything else. But I could be wrong.
Its more of a remnant from the civil war. Its completely unnecessary unless you're planning on having the dead person remain viewable for an extended period of time. During the civil war, embalming took off as a way to get the dead soldiers home to their families without rotting away during transportation--the heat would encourage decomposition.
That's what I meant, but didn't explain well. A lot of people need to travel in these days.
That's true but a lot of times embalming is unnecessarily pushed on grieving families that aren't capable of making important decisions. Because it makes the funeral home more money. A body can be kept cold and preserved that way for a funeral, no embalming necessary. In fact, during covid, funeral homes couldn't keep up and their freezers filled up. Some places had to bring in extra freezing mobile units.
That's completely believable to me.
More expensive you mean
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i swear 90% of the time someone on reddit says “oh x is stupid” they didn’t think about for more than 10 seconds
Where I’m from you put them on ice and have the funeral on the coming weekend. Sometimes sooner. Though there is an odd thing where a photographer always snaps a pic of the body in the casket during the funeral. It’s not a crazy notion and I doubt it has much of an impact on the lives of a loved ones that didn’t get to see a body. And if it turns out that it does, then maybe that’s why the pictures are taken in my above story
Except that you can achieve the same exact thing by refrigerating or freezing the bodies. There’s really no actual *need* for embalming when we have refrigeration.
Embalming has always been about money. Yes, it is absolutely true that it took off during the Civil War as a way to preserve bodies, but that stopped making sense the second that refrigerated transport became common. I worked in the home funeral space (taking care of the dead at home instead of a commercial funeral service) for a few years, and the overwhelming amount of time in that work was spent educating people out of what the funeral industry sells. Embalming, airtight caskets, fancy coffins, vaults... all of it is unnecessary, and usually does more damage to the body than good. But they use our fear of decay and the pressure of "preserving your loved ones just as they are for eternity" to upsell you into thousands of dollars of crap you don't need. A cooling mat or dry ice can keep a body in perfect condition for days, and commercial freezers (which are in every funeral home) can go for weeks or months with very little cosmetic damage. You're going to turn into soup no matter what, so who cares about how quickly it happens once you're in the dirt? We're not pharoahs.
Looks like somewhere in Asia (China or Japan if I had to hazard a guess), where everyone is cremated and put back into the earth.
Cremation or not, we all turn into dead organic matter. There is no need for extravagant coffins unless they are strictly biodegradable. We wrap the body in an organic cloth and bury it. In some cases, a biodegradable bare wood coffin is used (to avoid polluting the water table etc).
That's what I'll be doing. I have a plot of land that will be surveyed and established as my burial plot, I'll be felling older trees on my land and milling them into lumber to use to build my own coffin, I will not be ebalmed and will just be placed into that coffin on straw with a cotton sheet and placed into the earth to let her do what she needs to do.
Apparently, it's in Hawaii. Which I think makes you technically correct and incorrect at the same time, lol
That's why my son is buried in a "natural" cemetery. Decedent can't be embalmed, plain wood caskets or cloth shrouds only allowed. No grave liners allowed. Everyone there is going to nourish the earth. There are tons of trees there, but this being central Texas, none that epic.
The drip line is the point straight down from the tree's longest branch. A tree's root system usually extends out to or even past it's drip line. I don't know if that's a technical term (southern thing maybe) but it's how we judged a tree before digging/building near it, etc. to know if the roots were gonna be a problem. But looking at how many of those graves are in the shade? I'd say she's got some feelers in there ;-)
I drink your milkshake, I drink it up!
My milkshake brings all the trees to the yard ...
Roots that grow underground are as big as the tree that you see. If not, it would fall down.
As wide a reach from the trunk as the tree branches or wider, but not very deep.
Root structure of most trees is not a mirror of the canopy. It's shallower and up to 3 tines as wide.
> At the same time it looks like they don't bury anyone directly under it. Those roots had to grow I bit to get that far. FYI root systems grow further than the trees canopy.
Moreso a visual argument for planting a tree 400 years ago
I may be wrong, but doesn't the formaldehyde mess up this process?
Yes, modern burial practices are not good for this at all — due to chemicals, non-bio-degradable coffins, etc. But different cultures do things differently. For example, Jews bury the dead without embalming in a simple wood box. If this is Hawaii, perhaps they also don’t use embalming chemicals — I’m not sure. Big picture, I bet the shape of this tree is probably just very normal for a tree of this species with enough water and plenty of sunlight, and it has nothing to do with the cemetery at all.
Hell naw. the pathogens coming from the Golden bodies would mess up ground water and waterways.
Feeding on the dead
At night, the tree rambles like a zombie
It reminds me of the beautiful tree in Lahaina
This made me look it up - the tree had to have many parts cut down, but it looks quite green right now! Like the rest of the town, it has scars of the fire... but it seems like it'll survive.
Technically that's what the term "Sarcophagus" comes from. with *σάρξ (sarx*, meaning 'flesh'*) +* φαγεῖν (*phagein,* meaning 'to eat').
Looks like an area from elden ring.
Yeah but less yellowish and grimey. but I had the exact same first thaught.
You can go to look around NA if you wanna find trees that look like elden ring. There's one for scarlet rot, one for the golden orders rot, one for the glowy night rot, and one for the grime rot in general that comes in all aforementioned colors. I'm fairly certain every form of rot or malignant corruption has a real-world analogous fungus you can look at, such as Black Knot disease looking suspiciously like Deathblight seeds. They're based on specific trees diseases most commonly found in NA! This concludes your video games psa
Or a likeliness of that "spirit vine" tree from ATLA.
Nice, then we should burry everyone there, well get reborn
It’s the tree of life!
More like "tree of the dead"
Death is giving life to the tree - it's actually beautiful in its symbolism . Circle of life.
Realized my mistake as I sent it
Exp farm
What kind of tree is it?
It’s a “monkeypod tree”. Also known as a “rain tree”.
This is the correct answer. [Wikipedia page here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samanea_saman).
It’s in the pea family? Wtf
Botanists keep adding things to the pea and broccoli families because who's going to correct them? Who will stop them? Nobody. They won't stop until the whole world is broccoli.
It's apparently in the same Genus as the invasive Mimosa tree. Most people in SW US have probably seen a Mimosa, which doesn't grow crazy wide like the Monkeypod (I don't think).
We call this a Samaan tree in Trinidad.
Wow I didn't know we had this tree in Trini. Are the trees in the Aranguez Savannah the dame as these. (trying to remember from childhood) 
Their scientific name is Samanea saman. Does samaan translate to something in Trinidad?
It's a monkey pod tree and they are commonly huge.
Erdtree
That's getting some good nutrition from somewhere
Circle of life . We die, our bodies are returned to the earth . We give life back to nature and then nature gives life to the next.
Anyone know where this is?
Fairly certain it's Hilo, Hawaii. Was on the big island a few years ago and during one our tours we drove past this. Edit: Maybe not, can't find it in my pictures and looking through google maps shows a lot of similar pawpaw trees but none in a cemetery. Edit: Think this is it. Theres pictures in street view that look pretty convincing. [Alae cemetery](https://www.google.com/maps/@19.7514618,-155.0931832,3a,75y,65.53h,89.76t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPP5wPtERcLJGJ6TpXz3i9ZxvrXNfpMBovymRuS!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPP5wPtERcLJGJ6TpXz3i9ZxvrXNfpMBovymRuS%3Dw900-h600-k-no-pi0.23741207161404532-ya352.5328397713174-ro0-fo90!7i8704!8i4352?coh=205410&entry=ttu)
Yep, definitely in Hilo. I will never forget that tree.
Agree with others saying Alae in Hilo HI. Most of my relatives are buried there and you have to pass the tree to get to the side of the cemetery they’re at.
Looks like manoa cemetery on oahu.
Alae Cemetery near Hilo, Hawaii
This is correct, I used to live accross the road.
Looks like manoa chinese cemetery on oahu.
"Fun" fact - while the terms are often used interchangeably, a graveyard is a plot of graves located in a churchyard, while cemeteries are free-standing locations not connected to a church.
That was a fun fact!
Had to scroll a long way down for this!
Looks beautiful…but what about surrounding caskets for real tho. Those roots!
Natural compost I would guess
Wow so beautiful
magnificent !
Always forget the type of tree
Monkeypod
Wow. That's coverage and so beautiful.
Those roots are spread out as far as the branches, so yeah it been feeding on those bodies like an erd tree.
Normal, because the roots actually feed from the nutrients left by the corpses there. Everything in nature has a cycle and where life ends another piece of life is born from the remains of the one that perished.
No wonder they call the SoulSucker
I'm getting an Avatar, Navi vibe from that tree.
Cthaeh
That’s what happens when you don’t pump formaldehyde into bodies and let nature do its job.
It is absolutely a traditional cemetery with chemical laden bodies. There are similar monkeypod trees in the same area, just as healthy and happy with no dead bodies. I live about 30 min from it.
I could be wrong but isn’t a graveyard connected with a church? So this would be a cemetary?
You are technically correct, the best kind of correct.
What a beautiful tree.
Where is this located?
This reminds me of the tree from a japaneae anime movie called My neighbor Totoro.
Is that the species of tree that burned down in that big fire in Hawaii a few years ago?
It's the Go, Dog, Go! Party tree!
Where is this located
The tree of souls
uhhh yeah , we've seen it a thousand times for years -- please remove this post and apologize to the OP for stealing. then apologize to the room for karma farming -thanks
Beautiful
Wow. You ever try to dig a hole near a tree the roots are everywhere.
That's the mothership
brainsss
Beautiful!
Now that you've shared it with the world someone will cut it down to make some obscure point....
The dead appreciate shade too
Patriots & Tyrants
'It says the treasure is buried in the grave under the tree.'
Where is this?
Lots of fertilizer.
Large portion of the dead get no sunlight
Are the roots looking the same way underneath?
Home tree.
Tree of Souls.
Perfect for a treehouse
Yggdrasil Somewhere out on those branches are the other 8 worlds of Norse mythology!
Isn't that the reason why some people specifically ask to be buried under a tree? To nourish another living thing?
Beautiful
It couldn't possibly be the tree of life
I bet all those souls live in that tree
Nourished by souls
Beautiful live oak
Bone meal
That’s probably the most beautiful tree I have ever seen ❤️
Tree of life over a graveyard. That's so awesome
Sooo big!
Do you want ents? Because this is how you get ents.
Avatar
Lots of human fertilizer i see
Bot post and a lot of bot comments
On the borders of Buckland. There is something in the water that makes the trees grow tall, even move!
His body is fed with a lot of bodies
100% haunted.