Understanding the mysterious world of trees

Denseness of a natural forest – the Sinharaja rainforest in Sri Lanka	The root of a tree

This is part two from our series from the book ‘The Hidden Life of Trees’ by Peter Wohlleben originally published in German as ‘Das geheime Leben der Baume’ in 2015 by Ludwig Verlag, a division of Verlagsgruppe, Random House GmbH, Munchen, Germany. The Hidden Life of Trees was published in the English language in hardback by Greystone Books Ltd. in 2016 in Vancour, Canada. The paperback edition of the book was first published in the United Kingdom by William Collins in 2017.

This series is being created by the Harmony Page of Weekend FT, honouring the national month/s dedicated to reading in Sri Lanka and is to be turned into a training curricula for educational institutions and related institutions. 

By Surya Vishwa

The tree world is also one of fierce competition, like ours, but their timespan, if trees are allowed to grow at their own space, as in natural undisturbed forests, go onto hundreds of years. A ‘youthful’ tree with amorous flirty branches will be giving leafy ‘winks’ at the sky at the youthful age of 100 years. Trees also develop ‘wrinkles’ with the advancement of time and get ‘bald’ around the crown and ‘wide’ around the midriff – just like our grandpas and grandmas. They can also get prone to ‘acne’ like conditions formed through bacteria and diverse fungi just like humans. Although there is endless competition for resources such as water and sunlight, the philanthropy of forest beings seem more gracious than humans. 

Trees like humans need ‘sugar,’ as their ‘energy food,’ and water as their thirst quencher. Trees are more equipped with patience and tolerance us. And yes, they can be said to have an equivalent of a ‘brain’ as humans but it is in their roots and ‘wired’ into the underground where the ‘earth-wide-intelligence’ resides lorded over by the fungi. They too get romantic and ‘fall in love’ – which is why blossoms spread across the world and regeneration of forest life goes on. The trees also ‘plan’ their ‘families’ and hold on ‘birth’ for a year or two, after ‘assessing’ local ‘conditions’ – which take into account the population growth within the said time frame of animals and insects. The tree matrons seem much more ‘strict’ than our human mothers.

The fungi can be described as the masters of the forests as they decree life and death much of the time and their manoeuvres can bring down even a mighty tree. Trees have the capacity to maintain inner balance – possibly better than humans, where energy/strength is carefully distributed for daily tasks. 

Girdling

Next time your child asks you where he or she came from, try saying that the arms of the wind plucked the teeny weeny baby from a forest tree and deposited in your house; it may seem more plausible than the stork story. 

The book, The Hidden Lives of Trees, based on life within natural forests of Europe shows us that the fate of a tree is decided based on where the seed falls – transported by wind – or animals – or the bees flying around with pollen. Sometimes the seeds will land under the mother trees where it may struggle for sunlight under the dense green apron and it is only when the tree mama decide to depart from life (which will not be anytime soon) that the youngsters can rise to the sky. Till then the sky is a space that only their mothers could freely gaze at. 

Last week we stopped at chapter 3 titled Social Security. Before shifting to chapter 4 we will look at the description of ‘girdling,’ a process where a strip of bark three feet wide is removed all around the tree with the intention of ending its life. This is what ‘foresters’ do in man-controlled forests, author of the book, Peter Wholleben explains, recalling his own time as such a ‘forester.’ He makes note of the fact where adamant tree neighbours had succeeded in keeping such trees alive. The girdling process adopted by foresters in man-managed forests is owing to their lack of understanding in how the true psyche of trees operate – girdling based killing of some trees – is thought to help other trees get better access to growth. 

Love

We now turn to chapter 4 titled ‘Love’ where insights into the colourful ‘love-life’ of the tree world and the strategic ‘family planning’ of the forest is explained. Here the difference between coniferous trees (that produce cones and needle or scale like leaves) and deciduous trees (those that have flowers, and/or flat, broad often colour changing leaves, such as Oak, Teak, Maple, Jackfruit) which generally shed their leaves once a year. Conifers are unpalatable to herbivores and as a result bloom every year. This is in contrast to deciduous trees which adopt their birthing strategy taking into consideration the population of herbivores – boar and deer – who are very partial to diets such as beechnuts. At times trees are devoured to skeletons in the fall so that by the time spring comes along the forest is bereft of beech and oak seedlings, Peter Wholleben points out. He notes that this is what makes trees ‘agree’ in advance on giving it some time gaps before they produce the next heirs of the forest. 

When the beeches and oaks in agreement all produce their young in throngs it is not possible for the animals to eat up everything. The animal population gets low – being famished during the lean years where the trees have postponed blooming. The beeches and oaks can put off blooming for a varying number of years, according to circumstances and this impacts not only the animal world but also the insect realm. The bee population and that of the wild boar could be completely destabilised by the long term birth control of these trees, it is explained. When the blooming does occur it is the wind that is mainly instrumental in spreading the tree progeny far and wide within the forest, the book emphasises comparing the role of the bees in pollination as being significantly lesser. The birthing process of the European natural forests is further elaborated by using species like spruce as example – where male and female blossoms come to life a few days apart and the pollen from the differing spruce releasing itself into a celebration of fertilisation. The bird cherry trees which produce male and female sex organs in contrast prefer to depend on the bees in the pollination drama. 

Where the willows are concerned it is the bees which act as matchmakers, flying to the male willows, collecting pollen and then transferring the pollen to the female trees. The book notes that scientists have discovered that willows ‘put on’ an alluring scent to attract bees. And the male willows make their catskins to be bright yellow and when the bees attracted by this visual lure arrive, and after feasting on the sugary nectar depart towards the greenish flowers of the female trees, the marriage is sealed. One of the main takeaways from this chapter is how wind, animals and insects help to keep intact the diversity of natural forests.

Tree lottery

Chapter 5 titled ‘Tree Lottery’ is all about how the game of life plays about for natural forest trees, their neighbours and families. The word lottery refers to the chances that involve the gift of life to grow freely – which comes entwined with death – when an aged family member finally decides it has lived long enough – after a couple of hundred years. This chapter gives the reader an understanding into the inner intelligence that governs trees – and the ‘growing pangs’ of these beings. This chapter shows in detail just how much of planning it takes and the backbreaking (may the term branch breaking is more appropriate) work that goes into producing blossoms, creating space for new leaves, growth of branches, and the food and water segmentation for these tasks, not to mention the warding off of ‘bad’ fungi/insects and befriending beneficial ones. 

The determination of trees, even in the arduous of conditions (like a beech made sickly by weevil monopolising its leaves with millions of eggs eating away its wellbeing) seems admirable. Faced with the reality of a shortened lifespan, the weevil invested and weakened beech tree puts all its energy into producing new blossoms. This is the last ambition of a immunity compromised tree – to keep generations of its legacy alive in the forest. The reader is told that a beech tree produces around thirty thousand beechnuts, wither once in 5 years or due to climate change within two or three years. In comparison the poplar produce around 54 million seeds each year. By this assessment alone we can imagine how rich a natural forest would be if man does not venture into it with his own assumptions of ‘helping’ the trees to grow. 

Chapter 5 of the book brings to life the concept of time in the tree psyche – its intense slowness is a vast paradox to our own understanding of time in human life. Trees it seems relish the meandering years, maybe though, with the exception of new trees having to grow up under the aprons of their mamas. While all the mature trees form a canopy and bask in the sun above, the baby trees have to struggle for years and years, scrounging as youth, for a little as 3% of sunlight. Again, the book gives an insight into the natural intelligence of trees which have a purpose and significance in all that they do. This sunlight deprivation by the tree mothers have been studied by scientists, Peter Wholleben notes, and they have come to the conclusion that this slow growth due to weak exposure to sunlight, enables the tree to live upto a grand old age. 

Maternal instincts in trees

A scientist who studied ‘maternal instincts’ in trees, Dr. Suzanne Simard’s work is described where she found that the dominant mother trees influence the ‘upbringing’ of their children by wielding their authority underground as well, where they are connected through the filigree of the fungal root network to other trees and their roots (we can imagine the discussing and the exchanging of notes that goes on – pertaining to the tree youngsters who will one day take over the forest). 

As example Peter Wholleben takes a young beech tree who at 80 years would be a standing under their 200-year-old tree mothers and expect to wait at least another 200 years before they can actually wholeheartedly greet the sun. Their growth however is kept up by the matrons feeding sugar and other nutrients to their children through the roots. The roots of trees come across as being the super brain of a tree; next time you see a root show more respect to its brilliance. 

Forest etiquette

Chapter 7 of the book, is titled Forest Etiquette which list out the expected formalities and norms in a natural forest. Through the other chapters that we have covered so far we are already aware of several courtesies the trees show each other and how they behave in diverse conditions to fellow trees, sick trees, animals and fungi. In this chapter it looks at things such as how a well groomed tree, following forest etiquette would look like, say a deciduous specie. It would, the book notes, have a ramrod straight trunk with orderly arrangement of wood fibres with the root stretched out evenly in all directions and reaching deep into the earth. With time there would be a symmetrical crown formed by sturdy branches reaching to the high heavens. 

The same grooming etiquette would hold for conifers, we are told, except that the topmost branches would be horizontal or bent slightly downward. Rather than vanity, the tree ‘garments’ that must be produced and worn as appropriate – to display a well formed crown – is more for stability and endurance. The crown of a tree must have enough stamina to withstand rain in their relentless torrents, heavy weights of plummeting snow and wild winds. 

A well-developed crown of fully grown up trees that have to fight off these perils will be taking the brunt of whatever comes its way and thereby preventing the impact of it being directed to the roots. It is explained that a weak spot anywhere in the tree would lead to the pressure directed to the base of the tree trunk, uprooting it. So, if a tree trunk is curved and a crown is not evenly distributed over the trunk, or when a tree is forked, then the result is fatal in a windstorm.

Tree school

In chapter 8 titled Tree School we are told that thirst is hard for trees to bear than hunger. Tree hunger is satisfied by photosynthesis – the process where trees prepare its own food using carbon dioxide, water, sunlight and converting all of these into sugar. 

We are informed that a mature beech tree can use up 130 gallons of water per day for its wellbeing. In this chapter the topic turns to ‘tree brains’; in an attempt to understand just where their intense intelligence is stored. The work of Australian scientist Dr. Monica Gagliano is used as example – where she had studied the tropical creeping herb, the mimosa. 

These plants, when touched closed their leaves and later in an experiment when water droplets were cast on them at regular intervals, the leaves although closing themselves in the beginning, remained open after a while, realising there is no damage to them. It is also mentioned that scientists of the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research recorded ‘screams’ of trees when they are extremely deprived of water. It is noted that these are vibrations that could be interpreted as cries of thirst. 

(To be continued.)