Dendrophilia (or less often arborphilia or dendrophily) literally means "

love Love encompasses a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states, from the most sublime virtue or good habit, the deepest Interpersonal relationship, interpersonal affection, to the simplest pleasure. An example of this range of ...

trees In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are u ...

". The term may sometimes refer to a

paraphilia Paraphilia (previously known as sexual perversion and sexual deviation) is the experience of intense sexual arousal to atypical objects, situations, fantasies, behaviors, or individuals. It has also been defined as sexual interest in anything ot ...

in which people are sexually attracted to or sexually aroused by trees. This may involve

sexual contact Human sexual activity, human sexual practice or human sexual behaviour is the manner in which humans experience and express their Human sexuality, sexuality. People engage in a variety of sexual acts, ranging from activities done alone (e.g. ...

or veneration as

phallic symbol A phallus is a penis (especially when erect), an object that resembles a penis, or a mimetic image of an erect penis. In art history a figure with an erect penis is described as ithyphallic. Any object that symbolically—or, more precisely ...

s or both. The word dendrophilia has also been used in cognitive science. Fitch’s dendrophilia hypothesis deals with trees in terms of cognitive representation, stating that the human brain partakes in

abstraction Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process wherein general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ("real" or "concrete") signifiers, first principles, or other methods. "An abstr ...

by forming tree structures with data.

References

Paraphilias {{sex-stub