The Wonder of Trees
Preached 1/12/2020 at SouthWest UU in N. Royalton OH
By Rev. Meg Mathieson
Nature keeps on giving and giving and giving. Those beautiful words of gratitude dovetail perfectly into our theme today of wonder.
I often come up to this pulipt freshly excited about a book I have read that I can’t wait to share, and the only thing different about today is that I haven’t even finished the book yet that I am bursting to share with you. Has anyone read “The Overstory” by Richard Powers?
How about “The Hidden Life of Trees” by Peter Wohlleben? I’m going to quote extensively from my colleague Rev Dr Carl Gregg in a sermon I had the pleasure to hear him give about this time last year on this book, starting with:
“One of the first keys for learning more about the hidden life of trees is that compared to us humans, trees are slow. But there’s a good reason why: one of the oldest trees on Earth is a Spruce in Sweden that has been estimated to be more than 9,500 years old. “With such a luxury of time on their hands, [trees] can afford to take things at a leisurely pace. The electrical impulses that pass through the roots of trees, for example, move at the slow rate of one-third of an inch per second.”
The relatively slow pace of trees can lead us to misperceive them as much more inanimate than is the case in reality, but those one-third of an inch per second electrical impulses—ultra slow moving as they may be—are one of our first glimpses into the hidden life of trees. It turns out that trees use electrical impulses as one of their many methods of communication, which also include senses of smell and taste:
If a giraffe starts eating an African acacia, the tree releases a chemical into the air that signals that a threat is at hand. As the chemical drifts through the air and reaches other trees, they “smell” it and are warned of danger. Even before the giraffe reaches them, they begin producing toxic chemicals. Insect pests are dealt with slightly differently. The saliva of leaf-eating insects can be “tasted” by the leaf being eaten. In response, the tree sends out a chemical signal that attracts predators that feed on that particular leaf-eating insect.
Trees may be slow, but they have a lot going on.
More astonishing still is that the relationship between trees that grow naturally together in the wild is incredibly intricate—really intimate. Wohlleben calls it the “wood wide web.” Tree have evolved to take care of one another, “sometimes even going so far as to nourish the stump of a felled tree for centuries after it was cut down by feeding it sugars and other nutrients…. [but] only some stumps are thus nourished. Perhaps they are the parents of the trees that make up the forest of today” (viii).
To share with you some of the discoveries currently being made about trees, Wohlleben writes that:
The roots are the most important part of a tree. Conceivably, this is where the tree equivalent of a brain is located. Brain? you ask. Isn’t that a bit far fetched? Possibly, but we know that trees can learn.
This means they must store experiences somewhere, and therefore, there must be some kind of a storage mechanic inside the organism. Just where it is, no one knows, but the roots are the part of the tree best suited to the task….
[Specifically,] researchers at the University of Bonn measured electrical signals that led to changes in behavior after they were processed in a “Transition zone.” If the root encounters toxic substances, impenetrable stones, or saturated soil, it analyzes the situation and transmits the necessary adjustments to the growing tip. The root top changes direction as a result of this communication and steers the growing root around the critical areas. (82-83)
But it gets more fascinating still: the Australian scientist Dr. Monica Gagliano has published research about mimosas—not the champagne and orange juice cocktail, nor the so-called Mimosa tree common throughout the American south, but the tropical creeping herb.
Mimosa plants are much easier to study in laboratory conditions than large trees. What’s fascinating is that Gagliano’s stimulus-responses tests of interacting with the plants using water, the mimosas would “remember and apply their lesson weeks later, even without any further tests” (47-48). So something interesting is going with trees and memory even if we don’t yet fully understand.
I will readily confess that one might argue that this perspective is absurd anthropomorphism, projecting human traits on to trees and plants. But by no means is this claim a new-fangled idea. Indeed, less than two years before Darwin’s death in 1882, he published a book on The Power of Movement in Plants in which he concluded, along the same lines as Wohlleben, that “It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the tip of the radical [root]…acts like the brain of one of the lower animals…receiving impressions from the sense organs and directing the several movements” (Safina 24).
From this perspective—taking Darwin’s theory of the “descent of man” seriously—it is not surprising that all of life is on a spectrum of thinking and feeling because all of life can be traced back to a common ancestor on the evolutionary “tree of life.” If we are all part of one large “tree of life,” then it begins to seem more natural than odd for life in the Plant Kingdom to have evolved aspects of life (like versions of memory, taste, and smell) that are also present in the Animal Kingdom.
The Hidden Life of Trees is all science, but it has a brother in “The Overstory” by Richard Powers, possibly the most astonishing fiction I have ever encountered. As I said, I haven’t even finished this novel yet, so you won’t find it in the back on my little lending library table. For now I am going to simply tease you with the merest taste, such as this quote, from a book within the book:
“You and the tree in your backyard come from a common ancestor. A billion and a half years ago, the two of you parted ways. But even now, after an immense journey in separate directions, that tree and you still share a quarter of your genes.”
“There are no individuals. There aren't even separate species. Everything in the forest is the forest. Competition is not separable from endless flavors of cooperation. Trees fight no more than do the leaves on a single tree. It seems most of nature isn't red in tooth and claw, after all. For one, those species at the base of the living pyramid have neither teeth nor talons. But if trees share their storehouses, then every drop of red must float on a sea of green.
Something marvelous is happening underground, something we're just learning how to see. Mats of cabling link trees into gigantic, smart communities spread across hundreds of acres. Together, they form vast trading networks of goods, services, and information.
There are no individuals in a forest, no separable events. The bird and the branch it sits on are a joint thing. A third or more of the food a big tree makes may go to feed other organisms. Even different kinds of trees form partnerships. Cut down a birch, and a nearby Douglas-fir may suffer.
Before it dies, a Douglas-fir, half a millennium old, will send its storehouse of chemicals back down into its roots and out through its fungal partners, donating its riches to the community pool in a last will and testament. We might well call these ancient benefactors giving trees.
The theme today is wonder. I’ve introduced our new friend the Wonderbox. We stand together, eyes open in wonder at this new decade which opens before us possibilities beyond our imagination. We live in an era where science and faith twist together and every day more of reality is revealed to us, and we can only wonder. We continue to wonder at this interconnected web and our place in it. And our responsibility for it.
I’ll end today with a bit of a poem by Wendell Berry:
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees every thousand years….
Preached 1/12/2020 at SouthWest UU in N. Royalton OH
By Rev. Meg Mathieson
Nature keeps on giving and giving and giving. Those beautiful words of gratitude dovetail perfectly into our theme today of wonder.
I often come up to this pulipt freshly excited about a book I have read that I can’t wait to share, and the only thing different about today is that I haven’t even finished the book yet that I am bursting to share with you. Has anyone read “The Overstory” by Richard Powers?
How about “The Hidden Life of Trees” by Peter Wohlleben? I’m going to quote extensively from my colleague Rev Dr Carl Gregg in a sermon I had the pleasure to hear him give about this time last year on this book, starting with:
“One of the first keys for learning more about the hidden life of trees is that compared to us humans, trees are slow. But there’s a good reason why: one of the oldest trees on Earth is a Spruce in Sweden that has been estimated to be more than 9,500 years old. “With such a luxury of time on their hands, [trees] can afford to take things at a leisurely pace. The electrical impulses that pass through the roots of trees, for example, move at the slow rate of one-third of an inch per second.”
The relatively slow pace of trees can lead us to misperceive them as much more inanimate than is the case in reality, but those one-third of an inch per second electrical impulses—ultra slow moving as they may be—are one of our first glimpses into the hidden life of trees. It turns out that trees use electrical impulses as one of their many methods of communication, which also include senses of smell and taste:
If a giraffe starts eating an African acacia, the tree releases a chemical into the air that signals that a threat is at hand. As the chemical drifts through the air and reaches other trees, they “smell” it and are warned of danger. Even before the giraffe reaches them, they begin producing toxic chemicals. Insect pests are dealt with slightly differently. The saliva of leaf-eating insects can be “tasted” by the leaf being eaten. In response, the tree sends out a chemical signal that attracts predators that feed on that particular leaf-eating insect.
Trees may be slow, but they have a lot going on.
More astonishing still is that the relationship between trees that grow naturally together in the wild is incredibly intricate—really intimate. Wohlleben calls it the “wood wide web.” Tree have evolved to take care of one another, “sometimes even going so far as to nourish the stump of a felled tree for centuries after it was cut down by feeding it sugars and other nutrients…. [but] only some stumps are thus nourished. Perhaps they are the parents of the trees that make up the forest of today” (viii).
To share with you some of the discoveries currently being made about trees, Wohlleben writes that:
The roots are the most important part of a tree. Conceivably, this is where the tree equivalent of a brain is located. Brain? you ask. Isn’t that a bit far fetched? Possibly, but we know that trees can learn.
This means they must store experiences somewhere, and therefore, there must be some kind of a storage mechanic inside the organism. Just where it is, no one knows, but the roots are the part of the tree best suited to the task….
[Specifically,] researchers at the University of Bonn measured electrical signals that led to changes in behavior after they were processed in a “Transition zone.” If the root encounters toxic substances, impenetrable stones, or saturated soil, it analyzes the situation and transmits the necessary adjustments to the growing tip. The root top changes direction as a result of this communication and steers the growing root around the critical areas. (82-83)
But it gets more fascinating still: the Australian scientist Dr. Monica Gagliano has published research about mimosas—not the champagne and orange juice cocktail, nor the so-called Mimosa tree common throughout the American south, but the tropical creeping herb.
Mimosa plants are much easier to study in laboratory conditions than large trees. What’s fascinating is that Gagliano’s stimulus-responses tests of interacting with the plants using water, the mimosas would “remember and apply their lesson weeks later, even without any further tests” (47-48). So something interesting is going with trees and memory even if we don’t yet fully understand.
I will readily confess that one might argue that this perspective is absurd anthropomorphism, projecting human traits on to trees and plants. But by no means is this claim a new-fangled idea. Indeed, less than two years before Darwin’s death in 1882, he published a book on The Power of Movement in Plants in which he concluded, along the same lines as Wohlleben, that “It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the tip of the radical [root]…acts like the brain of one of the lower animals…receiving impressions from the sense organs and directing the several movements” (Safina 24).
From this perspective—taking Darwin’s theory of the “descent of man” seriously—it is not surprising that all of life is on a spectrum of thinking and feeling because all of life can be traced back to a common ancestor on the evolutionary “tree of life.” If we are all part of one large “tree of life,” then it begins to seem more natural than odd for life in the Plant Kingdom to have evolved aspects of life (like versions of memory, taste, and smell) that are also present in the Animal Kingdom.
The Hidden Life of Trees is all science, but it has a brother in “The Overstory” by Richard Powers, possibly the most astonishing fiction I have ever encountered. As I said, I haven’t even finished this novel yet, so you won’t find it in the back on my little lending library table. For now I am going to simply tease you with the merest taste, such as this quote, from a book within the book:
“You and the tree in your backyard come from a common ancestor. A billion and a half years ago, the two of you parted ways. But even now, after an immense journey in separate directions, that tree and you still share a quarter of your genes.”
“There are no individuals. There aren't even separate species. Everything in the forest is the forest. Competition is not separable from endless flavors of cooperation. Trees fight no more than do the leaves on a single tree. It seems most of nature isn't red in tooth and claw, after all. For one, those species at the base of the living pyramid have neither teeth nor talons. But if trees share their storehouses, then every drop of red must float on a sea of green.
Something marvelous is happening underground, something we're just learning how to see. Mats of cabling link trees into gigantic, smart communities spread across hundreds of acres. Together, they form vast trading networks of goods, services, and information.
There are no individuals in a forest, no separable events. The bird and the branch it sits on are a joint thing. A third or more of the food a big tree makes may go to feed other organisms. Even different kinds of trees form partnerships. Cut down a birch, and a nearby Douglas-fir may suffer.
Before it dies, a Douglas-fir, half a millennium old, will send its storehouse of chemicals back down into its roots and out through its fungal partners, donating its riches to the community pool in a last will and testament. We might well call these ancient benefactors giving trees.
The theme today is wonder. I’ve introduced our new friend the Wonderbox. We stand together, eyes open in wonder at this new decade which opens before us possibilities beyond our imagination. We live in an era where science and faith twist together and every day more of reality is revealed to us, and we can only wonder. We continue to wonder at this interconnected web and our place in it. And our responsibility for it.
I’ll end today with a bit of a poem by Wendell Berry:
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees every thousand years….