While crown shyness is mostly observable in tropical trees, the same lessons are applicable for other trees, like evergreens. Trees that have more space grow bigger and healthier.

Malaysian scholar Francis S.P. Ng studied crown shyness in Dryobalanops aromatica trees in 1977, but found no traces of abrasion. That means it was something else causing their unique growth patterns.

Many trees distance themselves from other trees to minimize interaction with their neighbors – a pattern that researchers call crown shyness. If you look upward, you may notice gaps between ...

This is what is known as crown shyness, a term coined in the 1950s by Australian botanist Maxwell Ralph Jacobs, and it’s particularly interesting that it usually occurs among specimens of the same ...

Because of crown abrasion or shyness, the pines have small crowns that don’t expand as far out to the sides as they normally would. These forests eventually become stagnant.

The trees all grew back at the same rate, unlike mixed forests where some species grow more quickly than others. This produced tall, slender trees that sway more during windy events. Because of crown ...