Our 1.5 acre lot in Anacortes has an unusual number of Madrone trees on it. The developer who sold us the lot said that a forest fire decades ago created an ideal situation for nurturing Madrone, which evidently will regenerate faster after a fire than Douglas-firs.

While I appreciated the grace of the trees and attractive reddish-orange bark, I wasn’t amour with them until last summer when I saw what happens when the bark peels away to reveal the lime green trunk beneath.

The article on Wikipedia says that the "exposed wood sometimes feels cool to the touch." Their peeled trunks not only feel cool, but are amazingly smooth.   

I took some pictures of one of the trees on our lots, which was starting to peel. I helped it along by peeling off a large section of the bark and exposing the Shrek wood beneath. 

The picture at the top is of another tree at the base of an rock face we’ll one day turn into a waterfall.