Birsh
The Birsh is the crooked water-tree of Baramma Place Baramma The great jungle island east of Tarkdaara, separated from the mainland by the Bram Sea and home to the Bar.'s riverbanks, a low, broad-shouldered species whose twisted trunk grows as if wound from rope, every fibre locking spirally into the next. That coiled grain makes Birsh wood all but unsplittable and absurdly strong for its weight, and the gnarled elders stand the winter floods and the grinding ice without bowing. From the crown Place The Crown A newer foundry like a wide crown, a ring of tall pale spires flaring around a central stepped tower of lit decks, the broadest of the network. hang long curtains of pale green strap-fronds that trail in the current wherever the tree leans out over the water, and the bark parts in small diamond scales. Nothing else on the river looks like a Birsh, and nothing on the river is trusted like one.
Key traits
- The trunk's fibres grow in interlocking spirals; a Birsh log turns the wedge outright, and bridgewrights cut anchor-stubs, bearing-blocks and gate-posts from Birsh butt-wood because it never splits under load.
- Old trunks knot and twist beyond any other riverside tree, yet the young shoots, the Birsh withies, rise arrow-straight and tough; they are cut for bindings, basketwork and the bridgewright's measuring rods.
- It bears no flower; spore-braids ripen along the undersides of the strap-fronds and wash downstream on the first rise of Stormtide.
- It seeds only in flood-scoured ground along the high-water line, so an old rank of Birsh marks where the river once reached.
- Winter-bare, it neither bows nor breaks; ice that carries away rails and jetties leaves the Birsh standing, which is why the cable-song's praise, straighter than birsh, is sung both ways: against the withy it is the river's highest compliment, against the gnarled elder it is the crew's fond joke.