A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1469 entries
marten
A marten is a slender arboreal member of the weasel family with a bushy tail, a pale throat patch, and semi-retractable claws for climbing. It hunts squirrels through the canopy, moving fast along branches and taking prey in the trees rather than on the ground. Species range across North America, Europe, and Asia, and all of them need mature forest with cavities and deadfall.
Etymology
The word came into English from French, and the French from a Germanic root, and the animal was known for its fur long before it was known for anything else. That is why the word arrived at all: Marten pelts were a currency of the medieval northern trade, and a great deal of the exploration of northern Canada and Siberia was driven by them.
Notes
The North American marten and the fisher are close relatives with different specialties: The marten takes squirrels and voles, the fisher is larger and takes porcupines. Martens are the reason old forest matters more than forest cover, since they need standing dead trees to den in, and a plantation with no cavities will not hold them regardless of how many trees are in it.