Bent Trees

I have a simple explanation for the crooked forest. I had some drums on my wooded property, lying on their side, and pine saplings started growing from under the bottom edge. They followed the curve of the drum until they were tall enough to grow straight. They looked just like the ones in the crooked forest.

It is possible that drums were stored on the property and removed before they were fully grown, but still crooked as a sapling.

Looking at the drums, they look too perfectly bent to be a virus or storm damage, like the were bent on a mandrel(or drum).

Some could have sprouted after the property was mowed or broken off when the drums were dumped there, because it looks like the roots are going straight down from cut off or broken stump.

I wonder if anyone has tried to pull a string from 2 adjacent trees to see if they form a straight line or have the same diameter? A long, total view might be able to determine the drum placement by looking at the group as a whole and fitting cylinder shape to the image.

Comments welcome as always,(even pedantic ones(I'm over that peeve )

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crooked_Forest