Surai’s story has been changing since her birth. I would think about it and then comment it with my sister, who would give me her opinion and make suggestions. This way I worked on her background, her personality, I imagined the characters she could meet and how she would interact with them.
I may write about all that later on, but now I want to focus this post on the tree Surai comes from.
The fact that she was originally a tree that somehow turned into a human was decided almost since the beginning, though the how and why of her transformation have changed several times. Surai’s skin was slightly dark, trace of its evolution from the tree’s trunk; also brown should be her hair; her eyes, leaf-green; and, finally, there was her dress to be considered. I had designed it to be yellow and afterwards I decided it should be created from the tree’s flowers. I needed a tree that matched her appearance, so I started searching the Internet and the Encyclopaedia Britannica for a tree species with yellow flowers or leaves. I found about the champac, the winter hazel, the katsura tree, the ginkgo and, finally, the sassafras.
I may write about all that later on, but now I want to focus this post on the tree Surai comes from.
The fact that she was originally a tree that somehow turned into a human was decided almost since the beginning, though the how and why of her transformation have changed several times. Surai’s skin was slightly dark, trace of its evolution from the tree’s trunk; also brown should be her hair; her eyes, leaf-green; and, finally, there was her dress to be considered. I had designed it to be yellow and afterwards I decided it should be created from the tree’s flowers. I needed a tree that matched her appearance, so I started searching the Internet and the Encyclopaedia Britannica for a tree species with yellow flowers or leaves. I found about the champac, the winter hazel, the katsura tree, the ginkgo and, finally, the sassafras.
From the Sassafras albidum species, this tree of the laurel family (Lauraceae) grows in North America and Asia. It tends to be small, but its height can attain to 35 metres. Its aromatic leaf, bark and root are used as a flavouring, as a tea, and as a traditional home medicine. This trait made it ideal for my character, since her blood is supposed to have curative properties. Its bark is smooth, furrowed and orange-brown; it has small clusters of yellow flowers.
Its leaves can have three different patterns, even on the same twig: three-lobed, two-lobed, and entire, and they produce a scent similar to lemons when crushed. In fact, sassafras oil, extracted from its roots, is usually used in the perfume industry. Its fruits, produced only by female trees, are shiny, dark blue egg-shaped, each of them held in a red cup on an upright red stalk.
I then came to the conclusion that a sassafras would play out well as Surai’s original form and oh, what a coincidence! Their names initials also matched.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sassafras
http://www.na.fs.fed.us/pubs/silvics_manual/Volume_2/sassafras/albidum.htm
http://www.dof.virginia.gov/trees/sassafras.shtml
Encyclopedia Britannica 2004
1 comentarios:
Yeah, that was definitely the tree for Surai!
Keep posting, my botanic sis!
Lu