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Axel Erlandson (December 15, 1884 – April 28, 1964) was a Swedish American farmer who shaped trees as a hobby, and opened a horticultural attraction in 1947 advertised as "See the World's Strangest Trees Here," and named "The Tree Circus." The trees appeared in the column of Robert ''Ripley's Believe It or Not!'' twelve times. Erlandson sold his attraction shortly before his death. The trees were moved to Gilroy Gardens in 1985. ==Biography== Erlandson was born in 1884, in Halland, Sweden, to Alfred Erlandson (1850–1915) and Kristina Larsson (1844–1922). He had two older brothers, Ludwig (1879–1957) and Anthon (1881–1970), and one younger sister, Emma Swanson (1885–1969). The family emigrated to the United States in early 1886, settling in New Folden Township, Marshall County, Minnesota, where his father farmed and built barns, homes, and churches. His family also ran a limestone kiln, producing quicklime for mortar, plaster, and whitewash. Limestone rocks were collected from the surrounding fields and the men and boys kept the kiln fires going 24 hours a day during the processing time. As a young boy, Axel produced a working model of a threshing machine, but was disappointed when told by his parents that he couldn't take it along when they moved to California. In 1902, the family loaded their possessions into a rented box car and moved with a couple of other Swedish families to live at Hilmar, a new Evangelical Covenant Church colony in the Central Valley of California promising irrigated land for farming operations. He married his wife, Leona, in 1914 and they had one daughter, Wilma. He farmed outside of Hilmar, near his parents, raising beans and other crops. There, inspired by having observed a natural inosculation in his own hedgerow, he began in 1925 to shape trees as a hobby to amuse himself and his family.〔Correspondence from A.N. Erlandson to Wallace Davis, March 24, 1952, Santa Cruz, California, Museum of Art and History, special collections〕〔Book title ''People from Halland'' ISBN 1-157-33563-2, ISBN 978-1-157-33563-4 (Google books )〕 Very few people other than his sister and a few close family friends knew of his early work shaping and grafting trees. He created designs on paper first and then set out plants in the specified patterns; pruning, grafting and bending them according to his plans. Erlandson taught himself over a period of decades how to train the growth of trees into shapes of his own design and he considered his methods trade secrets. When children asked how he got his trees to grow like this, he would reply, "I talk to them."〔Erlandson, Wilma, ''My Father Talked to Trees'', 2001 P.13 ISBN 0-9708932-0-5〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Axel Erlandson」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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