A reader wrote to us saying, This is in fact the sexiest tree Ive ever encountered.
A reader wrote to us saying, "This is in fact the sexiest tree I've ever encountered." Kurt Hansen

We just got a letter to the editor by email, subject line: "Sexy tree."

I opened the email and saw the image above, as well as the image below. Immediately I thought of Charles Mudede's 2009 feature "The Sexiest Trees in Seattle." I can't remember everything about how that piece came to exist, but I remember I edited it, and I remember it started as "the best trees in Seattle," or something like that, and at the very end of the editing process I said to Mudede, "Do you think we should call it 'The Sexiest Trees' instead?" And he laughed so loudly and at such duration that I knew we'd stumbled onto the right thing.

The photos accompanying that story do the trees no justice.

Sexy trees have a distinguished history in Western literature. In Greek and Roman poetry, Daphne gets turned into a tree to prevent Apollo from being able to rape her. Myrrha gets turned into a tree after raping her own father, and the baby in her womb (who turns out to be Apollo) gets pulled out of her trunk by heaven's midwife. Narcissus doesn't get turned into a tree at the end of his curse, but he does turn into a flower. And in The Waves, Virginia Woolf has a queer boy named Neville (who has a crush on a jock named Percival) believe he is a tree, his unseen roots stretching deep underground.

Anyway, I thought the letter-writer was perhaps sending us this pic of a sexy tree because he'd read Mudede's essay. Welp—nope. He just thought it was a sexy tree and wanted to show us. (He was probably responding to this post on The Stranger's Instagram.)

"This is in fact the sexiest tree I've ever encountered," he wrote.

"I found it in Lincoln Park in West Seattle near the north side, looking over Puget Sound," he added.

After I sent him Mudede's piece, he responded, "I will give that piece a read, I think it's quite interesting!"

He gave us permission to publish these images on Slog, and said, in closing, "Thanks for realizing the true beauty of this tree!"

True beauty.
True beauty.

If you find a sexy tree and would like to see its picture on Slog, snap a pic and send it to us.