The secret life of trees

The secret life of trees.
Saturday I was marching down the hill to do my chores, oblivious to the beauty around me. My back hurt and I wasn't paying much attention to the beauty of the morning. Heavy on the marching, light on the paying attention.
And then I came up to this big fella. You've gotta admit, this is one impressive oak tree, one I've nick-named Twisted Oak. There are several twisted oaks around here and I always wonder how they grew to be that way. Are they all related? Do they recognize each other?
I studied biology in college and to do so you have to study a wide-range of subjects: physics, chemistry, biology, botany, cell biology, conservation biology. Some of it I loved (conservation biology, ornithology) some of it I hated and I think it hated me right back (like chemistry).
I've always loved animals and nature in general, but for years I only gave plants a cursory look. They provide a lovely backdrop and homes for animals but I didn't really give them much thought. Kind of embarrassing to write that as plants are rather essential to our survival. The oxygen to our carbon dioxide if you might.
Photosynthesis and cellular respiration are the yin and yang of life. It's a beautiful beautiful thing. I began to realize how I'd underappreciated and underestimated plants when I began teaching biology at our community college. The more I prepared for my classes, the more I saw the beauty in that relationship - we break down the food we eat through a process called cellular respiration and carbon dioxide is a by-product of that reaction.
Plants make sugars for their own 'food' through the process of photosynthesis and they do so by binding that "C" from the carbon dioxide we release. And it just so happens that as a by-product of photosynthesis, they release oxygen.
Trust me, this is the down and dirty 30 second condensed version of all that stuff students love to hate - the TCA/Citric Acid ( or Krebs) cycle and the light and dark reactions of photosynthesis.
But I digress. Plants.
It's so incredible. We need oxygen to live, and plants need the carbon dioxide from our expiration (exhaling) to make sugars for their food. Isn't that remarkable? I mean for real - it's amazing!
And when tasked with relaying this info to students, I was so struck with it myself that I finally gave plants a second look. Not that I deserve an award for finally giving them the time of day, but oh my. Once I did, I was blown away.
Did you know that some plants can produce chemicals to keep other plants away (it’s called allelopathy) to reduce competition?
That an aspen grove is considered a single organism, connected through an extensive root system and genetically identical?
That trees from tropical econsystems such as the rainforests of Costa Rica often show no growth rings because of the symmetry of the seasons?
That one tree's demise may provide another tree's opening into the sunlight in the fight for light?
That trees have relationships with fungi among their root hairs for the symbiotic gain of each?
And I'd just been marching past all that.
I shook the sleep out of my eyes, cleared my head and said good morning to this grand old fella. I thanked her/him for still standing in spite of the drenching rain we've had after a good solid drought, and stopped to look within the nooks and crannies of that beautiful old tree.
What a perfect spot for a gnome home, a squirrel hideaway, and of course the tennis balls that seem to end up there without fail just like that 100,000 point spot in a skee ball game you can never hit at Chuck E Cheese.
I thought about forest walking, a celebration of the magnificence of trees and the therapeutic value of taking the time to walk quietly among a forest; and of the rising awareness and popularity of Shinrin-yoku, or forest 'bathing.' People are stressed and they're finding peace and tranquility by walking through the filtered light of the forest.
I used to love predators over prey, movement over stillness, noise over silence. Time, little birds, brokenness, and trees have given me a new appreciation. It's a noisy world but sometimes its in the silence we hear the most, learn the most.
So I'm all for participating in tree appreciation. It's free, it's kinda fantastic, and I'd just about blown right by in my morning head fog.
Go hug and appreciate a tree today. You might think they're just standing around, but they have plenty to say if you're quiet enough to listen.
I'd love to hear how your tree appreciation goes. xoxo