How one Scientist is Uplifting Centuries Old Knowledge
“A chorus of living wood sings to the woman: If your mind were only a slightly greener thing, we’d drown you in meaning.
The pine she leans against says: Listen. There’s something you need to hear.”
Richard Powers
Trees have secrets to share. Scientists are finally ready to listen to their messages.
New research is uplifting centuries old knowledge that trees are hyper intelligent beings that form complicated relationships with one another.
Ruthless Competition
Let’s start 160 years ago. Charles Darwin, a scientist from England, took a voyage to South America. Darwin made observations and theories that have affected how we view all of nature and life.
He gathered observations on various creatures and wildlife, taking detailed notes on their behavior, distribution, and their interactions in their environment. Darwin formed the theory of natural selection. He formulated that all the special adaptations -traits that help an organism survive – came from ruthless competitions for resources available in the environment.
Darwin’s theory led the scientific community to view trees as solitary, individual organisms that ruthlessly compete against each other for water, nutrients, sunlight and their survival.
Our knowledge of trees is changing.
The Council of Trees Craft a Plan
Think of the trees that stand guard at the front of your house or at the local park. Most can see them, but can you hear them?
According to Indigenous scientist Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, those who have viewed trees as passive, solitary creatures have had the wrong idea all along. Dr. Kimmerer shows through her work that Indigenous peoples have held the knowledge of tree’s wisdom for thousands of years. Indigenous cultures know that trees are “beings equal to or exceeding the power of humans”. Kimmerer says “In the old times, our elders say, the trees talked to each other. They’d stand in their own council and craft a plan.”
Plants Are Storytellers
In Indigenous story traditions, they tell of a past where all creatures and organisms spoke the same language. They learned to listen closely to each other’s language and stories. They passed wisdom and life lessons to each other. Dr. Kimmerer says: “Plants tell their stories not by what they say but by what they do.” According to Kimmerer we have forgotten how to listen and learn from our fellow trees. The signals that trees send us have turned into meaningless noise. How will we find meaning again in the tree’s voices?
We Hear You Trees
Through Dr. Suzanne Simard innovative research, we are re-learning how to understand the tree’s language.
Dr. Simard started as a young aspiring logger and forester. The loggers of her grandparent’s time, though harvesting and cutting trees, left the forest looking pristine with a thriving ecosystem. However, when Simard entered, the main technique that loggers used was clear cutting. Loggers take a section of land and remove every single tree and bush from the area. Foresters wanted their seedlings to have the best chance of surviving by getting rid of the competition and giving them all the sunlight and water available.
Dr. Simard quickly realized that many of the seedlings planted in a clear-cut forest were not thriving, some of them not even surviving. Why?
She suspected the problem was occurring underground. There was a noticeable difference between seedling roots in a clearcut area vs in a thriving forest with older trees. In a thriving forest, seedlings are connected to older trees through mycorrhizas. Mycorrhiza is a partnership with string-like fungi that cover a tree’s roots. Fungi and trees have formed a union where they work to help each other’s survival. The fungi help the tree by giving them access to more water and nutrients in the soil. The trees help the fungi by giving them sugars that they produce during photosynthesis. Clear-cut seedlings did not have these connections to fungi.
Simard released a groundbreaking study that showed that trees were passing resources to each other, through the fungi networks underground. There was tree to tree communication. Simard explained: “plants within communities can be interconnected and exchange resources through a common network. They form guilds based on their shared mycorrhizal associates.”
Seedlings that are connected to a thriving forest through mycorrhizas have a better chance of survival than the seedlings that have been planted in a clearcut area without connections to other trees.
Her research was first met with a lot of skepticism and disapproval. However, scientists, including herself and Dr. Kimmerer, have significantly expanded and proved the findings of her original study, many times over.
After her landmark study, scientists have found that trees are intelligent, nurturing, cooperating, sharing, learning, sending signals, listening and much more.
What else will we learn when we listen to the whispers of the trees?
Resources:
- Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection of the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. New York, Signet Classics, 2009.
- Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Minneapolis, Minnesota, Milkweed Editions, 2013, pp. 128–140.
- Kimmerer, Robin Wall. “Hearing the Language of Trees.” YES! Magazine, www.yesmagazine.org/environment/2021/10/29/hearing-the-language-of-trees.
- Jabr, Ferris. “The Social Life of Forests.” The New York Times, 3 Dec. 2020, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/02/magazine/tree-communication-mycorrhiza.html.
- Simard, Suzanne. Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering How the Forest Is Wired for Intelligence and Healing. Penguin Canada, 2021.
- Simard, Suzanne W., et al. “Net Transfer of Carbon between Ectomycorrhizal Tree Species in the Field.” Nature, vol. 388, no. 6642, Aug. 1997, pp. 579–582, www.nature.com/articles/41557, 10.1038/41557.
- Powers, Richard. The Overstory. Wiley, 2019.
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