Arborglyph

Arborglyphs, dendroglyphs, silvaglyphs, modified cultural trees, or aspen carvings are tree carvings made in the bark of aspen trees by shepherds, many of them Basque and Irish American, throughout the Western United States. They have been documented across northern California and in areas such as Boise, Idaho and Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

A project run by the USDA Forest Service in 1997 to record and study arborglyphs in the Fremont National Forest of Oregon is documented here.

Researchers in Boise, Idaho have also reportedly documented arborglyphs in their area.

In the West the preferred carving tree is the aspen, which has a lifespan of only about 85 years on average.

The glyph on the "scorpion tree" viewed from Painted Rock in Carrizo Plain, California shows the counterclockwise rotation of stars around Polaris and appears to portray Ursa Major in relation to Polaris

Paleontologist Rex Saint Onge recognized that the tree was carved by Native America when he stumbled upon it in the fall of 2006. Located in a shady grove atop the Santa Lucia Mountains in San Luis Obispo County, the centuries-old gnarled oak had the image of a six-legged, lizard-like being meticulously scrawled into its trunk, the nearly three-foot-tall beast topped with a rectangular crown and two large spheres. "I was really the first one to come across it who understood that it was a Chumash motif," says Saint Onge, referring to the Native America Chumash Tribe who painted similar designs on rock formations from San Luis Obispo south through Santa Barbara and into Malibu.

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Wikipedia