Observations have been made of the tubulent structure within and above a dense (LAI=10.2) plantation spruce forest along with measurements of the movement of individual trees. The mean statistics of the turbulence and the turbulence spectra are compared with observations in other crops and complementary wind-tunnel studies using 1∶75 scale plastic trees. The measurements show that momentum transport and the subsequent motion of the trees is dominated by intermittent sweep/ejection events associated with ‘honami’ waves moving across the forest. The trees themselves act as forced damped harmonic oscillators and appear to short circuit the normal turbulent energy dissipation process by efficiently absorbing energy at their resonant frequencies. It is argued that understanding the nature and formation of ‘honami’ waves over forests and crops is a crucial problem in agricultural and forest meteorology because of their important role both in turbulent transport and in causing wind damage.