# 4 Woodland Riddle - May 2022

Riddle # 4: With baseball season finally in play, this month’s Wood You Not Know It? riddle is a double header with the April quiz. As a noun it is “the scientific study of trees”. Its adjective form is “having the shape or form of a tree”. Extra credit for identifying a noun related to this word for “the science or technique of dating events, environmental change, and archaeological artifacts by using the characteristic patterns of annual growth rings in timber and tree trunks.”
Answer: Dendrology. The related term is dendrochronology. 

1. Dendro is the Greek word for “tree”.
2. Chron is the Greek word for “time”.
3. Ology is also Greek word for “study”.
4. So, putting them all together you have, dendrochronology meaning “using trees to study time”.

Wikipedia’s definition of Dendrochronology, or tree-ring dating, is the scientific method of dating tree rings, also called growth rings, to the exact year they were formed. As well as dating them, this can give data for dendroclimatology, the study of climate and atmospheric conditions during different periods in history from wood.