I’m not sure what the divorce rate is among sycamore trees these days, but it’s got to be better than ours. A recent visit to the home of my friends Scooter and Marilyn gave me proof. Two neighboring tree trunks in their Sherman Oaks front yard had merged in a rock-solid bridge between the pair. It was lovely. Even romantic. A union for life.

The grafting process is called inosculation — a natural phenomenon where the branches or trunks first grow separately near each other until they touch. Then, as the trees move in the wind, the bark on the brushing surfaces gets scraped away, and the two become one. Sometimes the coupling even happens outside species.