Arboris Folium Font

September 30, 1996

Last Autumn, my friend Ruthi in upper New York, my friend Dave in Ontario, and I in Provo, UT, had an argument about fall leaves; the result was obvious -- Utah has the most spectacular leaves, mostly.

Just a couple of weeks ago, the deciduous trees near the timberline (or at least the ones pretty high up) began to change color, turning the mountain peaks a crimson orange. Then, slowly, the color began to move through the scrub oak down the mountains. Next week, the august Silver Maple in our neighbors yard will begin to drop its paper-like leaves, and the apple trees in our backyard will release its unpicked fruit, primed for apple pie.

ArborisFolium is a TrueType font, created by a couple who obviously spends too much time in the hills (or dreaming about being there). The font boasts 34 original drawings (68 total characters) by us (Lise and Andrew, though Lise drew most of them). We've tried to display a wide variety of leaves from both shrubs and trees; most of the foliage flourishes in the Rocky Mountain region. For the most part, we've stuck to single leaf examples from each type of tree (or bush), but there are exceptions: often, a single leaf would not do, since many are found only in clusters; we've also included some nuts.

These leaves are, on the whole, pretty darn good examples; a lot of work has gone into this baby. From its conception one and a half years ago, Lise and I have spent time selecting samples from separate botanical families and genera, penciling and inking the characters, scanning them, converting the work from TIFF to EPS with paths, cleaning up the lines and fixing splines, importing them to the font file, adjusting and recalculating bitmaps, cutting out the overlap, fixing the sizes of each character, futzing with the metrics, and so on. Most of the leaves print nicely from 8 to 151 points on a LaserWriter Select at 600 Dpi. (8 point is pretty darn small, however.)

AborisFolium Legend

CAPS & Smallcaps:

A Trembling Aspen
B Buckeye
C Chestnut
D Ginko
E Gumbell's Scrub Oak
F Hickory
G Holly
H Honey Locust
I Lombardy Poplar
J Silver Maple
K Swamp White Oak
L Pin Oak
M Red Oak
N Sweet Bay
O Tulip Tree
P Umbrella Tree
Q White Mulberry
R White Mulberry 2
S Crab Apple
T Crack Willow
U Hop Tree
V Buttonwood
W Limber Pine
X Paper Birch
Y Weeping Willow
Z Three-Leaf Sumach

Numbers & Stuff:

1 Hornbeam
2 Persimmon
3 Sugar Maple
4 Sweet Gum
5 Birch
6 Chokecherry
7 Maple seeds
8 Yucca