Brink, V. 2007. Wind and Plants: enemy and friend. A forest perspective Davidsonia 18(1):24-37

One line, “No rain, no crop, no feed, no faith, only wind” from Anne Marriott’s poem The Wind Our Enemy tells a vivid story of life on the Canadian Prairies during the dust bowl years. Uprooted trees portrayed the devastation caused by the wicked winds of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina when it hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of the United States. On December 15, 2006 a powerful wind made a shocking change in the appearance of the forest in Vancouver’s Stanley Park (UBC Faculty of Forestry, 2007). Wind indeed is enemy to plants, but in numberless ways it is also friend, and in the long term is essential in ecosystems.