Thread: Cultural Differences Between Americans and Russians

Originally Posted by LXNDR

lime daubing of trees trunks

Why is this done? I have wondered about this all my life. In some countries this is really common and in some countries you never see it. I have never been able to figure this out.

Painting trees with some white substance is widespread in Russia
I remember an explanation from primary school that it's done to help insectivorous birds to find and eliminate bugs on snow-white trunks. But I'm not sure if it's true.

Originally Posted by Dmitry Khomitchuk

They do it to protect trees from sudden weather change in early spring and late autumn. Also to protect from bugs, lichen, timber fungus, etc. There are many kinds of covering: different mixes of lime, clay etc.

Originally Posted by xdns

Painting trees with some white substance is widespread in Russia
I remember an explanation from primary school that it's done to help insectivorous birds to find and eliminate bugs on snow-white trunks. But I'm not sure if it's true.

i'm really curious how trees survive without it in other parts of the world

basically if you wish to make a city look like a village daub trees with lime

man, it's so lime


ok this at least has explanation, is there explanation for painting border stones white?

Originally Posted by LXNDR

i'm really curious how trees survive without it in other parts of the world

basically if you wish to make a city look like a village daub trees with lime

man, it's so lime
ok this at least has explanation, is there explanation for painting border stones white?

Well that's interesting because some of the countries where trees are painted have exactly the same climate and flora / fauna as countries where trees are not painted.
So who knows?

As for painted stones, the story I heard in school is that stones are sometimes painted white or reflective paint to be visible for low flying airplanes.
It must be a very old practice though, because throughout my lifetime at least, there have been more modern ways of navigating for airplanes...

A lot of weird things like this though, are from the War.... For example removing street signs... So if the enemy invades, they won't be able to know what street they are on... LOL! To this day there are still places in the UK where there are practically no street signs, and this is the explanation I have heard.

When I was going by train in Romania, I swear most stations had no sign to show the traveller what station you were at, and they did not announce it either. You were forced to ask somebody if you needed to know. Half the time you were not even sure whether the train was even at a station or not.
This too, is supposedly some kind of old paranoia related practice, although it's hard to notice what difference it makes.

Originally Posted by LXNDR

i'm really curious how trees survive without it in other parts of the world

basically if you wish to make a city look like a village daub trees with lime

man, it's so lime

Man, do you see ANYTHING NOT in the negative light?

The primary goal of painting trunks is to scare off hares and such (in village areas) and insects when a tree is in its most vulnerable (it also kills bugs who already managed to hide in the bark). The other reason is that it protects bark from sun and frost burns and prevents isolated parts of a tree from an early "awakening", because during early spring the difference between night and day temperatures can be quite big and potentially damaging.

At least it's supposed to work this way, as our primary teacher insisted. There are different opinions on this matter.

This practice is widespread in cities now, but initially it was used mostly for fruit trees for obvious reasons: they are more fragile than wild trees, and a fruit tree that awoke and blossomed too early would not give a lot of fruits - the blossoms often fall off when the late frosts strike. And in regards to city "non-blossoming" trees it's probably mindless tradition, supported by a fact that some people think that it looks nice (early spring in city could be very muddy and gray, and white trunks lighten it up a little).

In addition to my previous post.

I made a quick Internet search and apparently painting tree trunks is rather popular in many countries with hot climate for the same reason (fighting sun burns and insects).

Mexico (there are accounts of seeing painted trees even in forests):


Orange grove in Turkey:


An article on ehow.com about paining trees (with reasons and explanations):


I believe it's possible to find similar examples in some other countries with colder, or to be more exact with acutely continental climate.