the.com/sapling
A tree's awkward teenage years, all ambition and no shade to offer yet.
means A young tree, typically slender and not yet fully grown.
from From Middle English, built on 'sap' — the lifeblood that runs through living wood — plus the diminutive suffix '-ling', the same little tag that turns a duck into a 'duckling' and a goose into a 'gosling'. So a sapling is, quite literally, a 'little sappy one': a small tree still brimming with the rising sap of youth. The root 'sap' itself comes from Old English 'sæp', with cousins across the old Germanic tongues.
- flexible spine
- Bends in storms that snap rigid elders
- growth race
- Can shoot up faster than a child
- thin bark
- Easily wounded, no armor against deer
- forest wait
- May pause decades for a light gap
for instance
giant sequoia saplings — young redwoods in sierra nevada, california that can grow 300+ feet tall