Racist Trees?
Thursday, October 13th, 2022 08:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudioI had an entry up here yesterday that I've deleted, because some of the speculations were in error, and I can do better tonight, after having started the new audio book.
Having finished, Finding the Mother Tree yesterday, today I went back to Peter Wollheben, because he's got several more to read. I started listening to The Secret Wisdom of Nature but realized, two hours in, that I'd actually wanted to hear a different title of his, first.
So I switched to, Can You Hear the Trees Talking, and then realized... oh, this one's actually for school children!
But it didn't matter, because I was still getting a ton of basic information about trees that I didn't know before.
--<>--
With Mother Tree fresh in my mind, and just those couple hours of two different Wollhaben titles... I'm better prepared than I was yesterday to speculate about how (or if) the wood wide web works on an island block like mine.
------------{=0=}------------
I'll start with an observation I was able to make this summer, as the city was busy replacing old gas lines in the neighborhood. I got quite a good look at what the ground is like, several feet down, on the street, and... I think it's almost impossible for any tree roots to make it across the street.
It's all just layers of compacted gravel, and I'm sure that gravel continues down to the concrete sewer lines, which are about ten feet down.
So, it's safe to say that, yes, each block is an island, as far as tree roots are concerned.
So while trees on one block can communicate through the air, chemically, to trees on a neighboring block, below the soil, they're root systems are isolated.
--<>--
As for whether the island block is closer to being a forest, or a savannah... Wollhaben mentioned parks!.. and I think that's the best description.
Each block is, essentially it's own city park, that just happens to have houses in it.
Wollhaben pointed out that parks are more like zoos than forests, because every tree in a park is usually the only example of it's species, and they're spaced far apart.
And according to Wollhaben, that means their roots don't touch, and there is no fungal network tying them together. Therefore, each tree is just an isolated individual fending for itself.
But Wollhaben seems to have an odd bias toward the idea that trees can only communicate with their own species... even through the air.
He thinks that's also true underground, within the fungal networks, that he thinks only exist in bonafide forests.
And he thinks that trees, in such a bonafied forest, will only ever share resources with their own species.
However he occasionally admits that the fungi themselves will spread out resources between species... but against the trees wills.
I'm calling this a bias, because in Mother Tree Simard's very first experiment proved that Birch were trading resources with Douglas Fir... which is not just two different species... but a deciduous, and an evergreen species!
And Simard mentioned a lot of this going on, explaining that the fungi seemed to have an equal say in how resources and information were distributed throughout the network, because from the fungal point of view, the more total trees, and the more diversity the better.
Simard also mentioned experiments that showed interpecies COMMUNICATION via the root systems of, not just trees, but simpler plants like tomatos and corn and squash, etc.
So... I don't trust Wollhaben when he says that even atmospheric communication of threats is strictly species specific.
--<>--
In a nutshell, Wollhaben's take feels a little... racist?
He is a German forester, in Germany and... he does talk about his trees in other very old school ways. Like, you know... good little seedlings mind their mothers and grow slowly, in the shade, rather than gorging themselves on the "sugary treats" of doing their own photosynthesis!
And obedient trees grow STRAIGHT!.. and they grow STRONG!.. and thus ENDURE for a THOUSAND YEARS!... NINE!.. HEIL!..
He's about five years older than me... born in 1964, so... ya know!.. his parents were likely adults in WW2.
I'm not saying he's racist about humans... or that he's a bad guy.
He's actually a very delightful writer and a very intelligent man, who gives a lot of credit to Simard for informing his views.
But... certain subconscious viewpoints he may have been raised with?.. I think he may be projecting into the world of trees?*
So... I'm taking him with a grain of salt.
------------{=0=}------------
All of that said, my semi-urban block islands, here in the heart of Aurora, Illinois, are not exactly the same as city parks.
It's true that a lot of random tree species are thrown together on one island, with many being the only one of their kind.
But within the block interiors, they aren't spaced out all that widely. Yes, there are some larger gaps of open grass, but there's quite a lot of close grouping too.
And unlike in a park, where landscapers keep everything manicured, block residents can be lazy... or just be old... so a lot of trees DO spawn successful offspring, as planted by birds and squirrels... especially along the fence lines, where mowers can't mow, and weed wackers aren't always used.
--<>--
I know in my own yard... which is only a third of an acre... that we now have multiple Mulberry and Hackberry saplings. Even after all the cutting I did through 2020 and 2021, we still have about five of each...
Not counting the mother Hackberry on the front lawn, and the mother Mulberry in the back yard.
And I'm not talking about the Mulberry that fell over, I'm talking about the other bigger Mulberry back there that still stands!
And both of them were, according to Dad, two wild saplings that started out in the late 1950s... offspring of an even older, massive Mullberry that I used to pick the berries off of as a kid, that was in a different corner of the yard.
--<>--
I also used to climb that Hackberry in the front yard, back when it really was the only one of it's kind on the island... and a lot smaller.
But before I started cutting down the overgrowth in 2020, it had spawned... a DOZEN offspring, along the fence lines, with many at the far back, some 100 feet away from, Momma.
I cut and killed seven of them, in 2021, and that's when she began losing leaves all spring and summer... indicating that she was indeed connected to all of them... most likely through the root systems that I'd poisoned with Tordon.
I don't think she was mourning some others of her species being cut down... so much as absorbing the Tordon, to save the actual children of hers I had not touched.
I was oblivious at the time, to the species of the trees I was cutting & killing... and to any possibility that the Tordon might affect any other tree.
I knew only that Tordon works, because it gets into the root system and kills it.
I had no clue that the root systems might all be intertwined, and that there might be some family drama going on! I thought, like anybody, that trees were just deaf, dumb, blind wood things getting in the way.
But it does all make sense in hindsight. And, for the record, that mother hackberry has NEVER before shed leaves like that, from May through September... no matter what kind of spring cold snaps, we'd had,
And we'd had many, over my life, living alongside that tree.
--<>--
So... already it would seem that there is a strong network covering the whole yard, connecting Mulberries to Mulberries, and Hackberries to Hackberries.
But then we must look at the Ash network!
--<>--
When I was a kid, we had a row of seven Ash trees, in the back yard, on the North property line. They were very tall and skinny, with their crowns not starting until about twenty feet above the ground. Impossible to climb!
My grandfather had planted the whole row... each about eight feet apart... as a wind break!
He was into forestry too, though he died before I was born and my own interest in the subject came about independently.
Still... that was a good species to choose as a wind break, because their crowns are so high up.
Even to this day, the two remaining Ash trees on that line always catch the high wind and whisper loudly about it.
--<>--
But the thing about the Ash trees is... all seven were cut down over the 1990s, leaving seven stumps.
And from those seven stumps... two grew right back into full blown Ash trees! It's like they never left! The other five also continued to stay alive and... began acting as a kind of nursury for other seedlings!
I cut down trees growing out of those stumps in 2020 and 2021 that I did not kill... and four of the five sent new shoots right back the next spring! I've told you about these, because I settled for just turning them into shrubs.
But those shrubs coming out of the old Ash stumps are not Ash shrubs! They are Mulberry and Hackberry shrubs!
And last July, when I was planning to transplant Locust seedlings, my first choice was a Locust seedling growing on the north property line!... and when I went to try and dig it out?... I found it's roots HARD WIRED to those Ash stump roots beneath the soil!
I couldn't transplant it!.. which is why I went for the ones in the dog yard instead.
So, I know beyond any doubt, that the root network of those seven Ash trees not only grew back two new Ash trees, but have also ACTIVELY nursed Mulberry, Hackberry, and Locust seedlings to shoot up right there on the proptery line!
--<>--
The mother Locust tree, of course, is the one I haven't mentioned yet... the one other massive tree in our yard, which is even taller than the Hackberry and the Mulberry.
So, if there's a Hackberry network, and a Mulberry network... and an Ash network that is facilitating Hackberry, Mulberry, and Locust seedlings... then I would think it's safe to say... it's all one network, and all four species are working together.
--<>--
There's also the anecdote I related a few days ago, about the sudden snow on the night before Halloween in... 2018 or so... where all the trees, on all the island blocks, everywhere, dropped all their leaves in a single night... even though it only went a few degrees below freezing.
That would suggest all the different species, all over town... were very clearly communicating with one another, about the load threat of the heavy, wet snow coming down.
Wollhaben did say that atmospheric communication between trees has, in some cases, extended for hundreds of miles, and that we don't understand yet, how that could be possible.
But he still thinks all such communication is strictly within distinct species.
But he's also the guy who came up with the brilliant theory that deciduous trees shed leaves because of snow load, to begin with!
And he does have stories about... naughty German trees who held on to their leaves too late into October... seeking to gorge themselves on the, "sugary treats," of photosynthesis... that actually DID suffer broken limbs because of it!
--<>--
So, the fact that my isolated, naughty trees, in the silly zoo that is my city... managed to coordinate a citywide, emergency leaf drop... suggests to me, that my trees... have learned to overlook their differences, and work together... in ways that the forest trees of Germany have not.
In other words... the trees of northern, American urban environments may actually be... less racist toward one another than Wollhaben's trees of the German forest!
--<>--
If you follow the logic laid out by both Simard (Canadian) and Wollhaben, that trees are intelligent and social creatures... then it might make sense that the intelligent, social trees of the Great Melting Pot, might, in urban settings... have learned to set aside their differences and work together... just as humans in such places do!
------------{=0=}------------
That said, it's hard to gauge whether an underground fungal network covers the whole of my block interior, from curb to curb, throughout all the back yards.
I would assume it MUST, given how many giant trees there are, and how insanely well anything that's planted, grows on this block... including a neighbor's corn stalks... but I can't just walk around in my neighbors' yards cataloguing all the species, or the sprouting saplings.
And I don't know the history of what's been going on in every yard.
I can tell you that, most of the huge trees I can see from my back yard have been there for my whole life!.. many of them being monster conifers, and tall maple trees, but there are many others I'm just too ignorant to identify by eye.
--<>--
Still, my theory for now, is that there likely is, a fully established fungal network that permeates the entire block, and that all the trees, despite being different species, are in communication both underground, and above.
It does not at all strike me as being the kind of park/zoo situation that Wollhaben would imagine, where every tree is just a loner, and they don't recognize or communicate with one another in any way.
°¦}
*Prior to the work of Suzanne Simard, the prevailing viewpoint was that all trees compete with one another in a zero sum game... because all the men presuming this, were capitalists... projecting their capitalist values onto the trees.
Wohllaben accepts Simard's view that trees are actually a lot more caring and generous, and intelligent... but... I feel he may still be projecting onto them... ideas about good and obedient trees, loyal to their species prevailing over lazy, slacker trees who grow crooked and get drunk on sugar, allowing shifty fungi to funnel the spoils to competing species, for their own gain.
https://soundcloud.com/snoozefestaudio
Having finished, Finding the Mother Tree yesterday, today I went back to Peter Wollheben, because he's got several more to read. I started listening to The Secret Wisdom of Nature but realized, two hours in, that I'd actually wanted to hear a different title of his, first.
So I switched to, Can You Hear the Trees Talking, and then realized... oh, this one's actually for school children!
But it didn't matter, because I was still getting a ton of basic information about trees that I didn't know before.
With Mother Tree fresh in my mind, and just those couple hours of two different Wollhaben titles... I'm better prepared than I was yesterday to speculate about how (or if) the wood wide web works on an island block like mine.
I'll start with an observation I was able to make this summer, as the city was busy replacing old gas lines in the neighborhood. I got quite a good look at what the ground is like, several feet down, on the street, and... I think it's almost impossible for any tree roots to make it across the street.
It's all just layers of compacted gravel, and I'm sure that gravel continues down to the concrete sewer lines, which are about ten feet down.
So, it's safe to say that, yes, each block is an island, as far as tree roots are concerned.
So while trees on one block can communicate through the air, chemically, to trees on a neighboring block, below the soil, they're root systems are isolated.
As for whether the island block is closer to being a forest, or a savannah... Wollhaben mentioned parks!.. and I think that's the best description.
Each block is, essentially it's own city park, that just happens to have houses in it.
Wollhaben pointed out that parks are more like zoos than forests, because every tree in a park is usually the only example of it's species, and they're spaced far apart.
And according to Wollhaben, that means their roots don't touch, and there is no fungal network tying them together. Therefore, each tree is just an isolated individual fending for itself.
But Wollhaben seems to have an odd bias toward the idea that trees can only communicate with their own species... even through the air.
He thinks that's also true underground, within the fungal networks, that he thinks only exist in bonafide forests.
And he thinks that trees, in such a bonafied forest, will only ever share resources with their own species.
However he occasionally admits that the fungi themselves will spread out resources between species... but against the trees wills.
I'm calling this a bias, because in Mother Tree Simard's very first experiment proved that Birch were trading resources with Douglas Fir... which is not just two different species... but a deciduous, and an evergreen species!
And Simard mentioned a lot of this going on, explaining that the fungi seemed to have an equal say in how resources and information were distributed throughout the network, because from the fungal point of view, the more total trees, and the more diversity the better.
Simard also mentioned experiments that showed interpecies COMMUNICATION via the root systems of, not just trees, but simpler plants like tomatos and corn and squash, etc.
So... I don't trust Wollhaben when he says that even atmospheric communication of threats is strictly species specific.
In a nutshell, Wollhaben's take feels a little... racist?
He is a German forester, in Germany and... he does talk about his trees in other very old school ways. Like, you know... good little seedlings mind their mothers and grow slowly, in the shade, rather than gorging themselves on the "sugary treats" of doing their own photosynthesis!
And obedient trees grow STRAIGHT!.. and they grow STRONG!.. and thus ENDURE for a THOUSAND YEARS!... NINE!.. HEIL!..
He's about five years older than me... born in 1964, so... ya know!.. his parents were likely adults in WW2.
I'm not saying he's racist about humans... or that he's a bad guy.
He's actually a very delightful writer and a very intelligent man, who gives a lot of credit to Simard for informing his views.
But... certain subconscious viewpoints he may have been raised with?.. I think he may be projecting into the world of trees?*
So... I'm taking him with a grain of salt.
All of that said, my semi-urban block islands, here in the heart of Aurora, Illinois, are not exactly the same as city parks.
It's true that a lot of random tree species are thrown together on one island, with many being the only one of their kind.
But within the block interiors, they aren't spaced out all that widely. Yes, there are some larger gaps of open grass, but there's quite a lot of close grouping too.
And unlike in a park, where landscapers keep everything manicured, block residents can be lazy... or just be old... so a lot of trees DO spawn successful offspring, as planted by birds and squirrels... especially along the fence lines, where mowers can't mow, and weed wackers aren't always used.
I know in my own yard... which is only a third of an acre... that we now have multiple Mulberry and Hackberry saplings. Even after all the cutting I did through 2020 and 2021, we still have about five of each...
Not counting the mother Hackberry on the front lawn, and the mother Mulberry in the back yard.
And I'm not talking about the Mulberry that fell over, I'm talking about the other bigger Mulberry back there that still stands!
And both of them were, according to Dad, two wild saplings that started out in the late 1950s... offspring of an even older, massive Mullberry that I used to pick the berries off of as a kid, that was in a different corner of the yard.
I also used to climb that Hackberry in the front yard, back when it really was the only one of it's kind on the island... and a lot smaller.
But before I started cutting down the overgrowth in 2020, it had spawned... a DOZEN offspring, along the fence lines, with many at the far back, some 100 feet away from, Momma.
I cut and killed seven of them, in 2021, and that's when she began losing leaves all spring and summer... indicating that she was indeed connected to all of them... most likely through the root systems that I'd poisoned with Tordon.
I don't think she was mourning some others of her species being cut down... so much as absorbing the Tordon, to save the actual children of hers I had not touched.
I was oblivious at the time, to the species of the trees I was cutting & killing... and to any possibility that the Tordon might affect any other tree.
I knew only that Tordon works, because it gets into the root system and kills it.
I had no clue that the root systems might all be intertwined, and that there might be some family drama going on! I thought, like anybody, that trees were just deaf, dumb, blind wood things getting in the way.
But it does all make sense in hindsight. And, for the record, that mother hackberry has NEVER before shed leaves like that, from May through September... no matter what kind of spring cold snaps, we'd had,
And we'd had many, over my life, living alongside that tree.
So... already it would seem that there is a strong network covering the whole yard, connecting Mulberries to Mulberries, and Hackberries to Hackberries.
But then we must look at the Ash network!
When I was a kid, we had a row of seven Ash trees, in the back yard, on the North property line. They were very tall and skinny, with their crowns not starting until about twenty feet above the ground. Impossible to climb!
My grandfather had planted the whole row... each about eight feet apart... as a wind break!
He was into forestry too, though he died before I was born and my own interest in the subject came about independently.
Still... that was a good species to choose as a wind break, because their crowns are so high up.
Even to this day, the two remaining Ash trees on that line always catch the high wind and whisper loudly about it.
But the thing about the Ash trees is... all seven were cut down over the 1990s, leaving seven stumps.
And from those seven stumps... two grew right back into full blown Ash trees! It's like they never left! The other five also continued to stay alive and... began acting as a kind of nursury for other seedlings!
I cut down trees growing out of those stumps in 2020 and 2021 that I did not kill... and four of the five sent new shoots right back the next spring! I've told you about these, because I settled for just turning them into shrubs.
But those shrubs coming out of the old Ash stumps are not Ash shrubs! They are Mulberry and Hackberry shrubs!
And last July, when I was planning to transplant Locust seedlings, my first choice was a Locust seedling growing on the north property line!... and when I went to try and dig it out?... I found it's roots HARD WIRED to those Ash stump roots beneath the soil!
I couldn't transplant it!.. which is why I went for the ones in the dog yard instead.
So, I know beyond any doubt, that the root network of those seven Ash trees not only grew back two new Ash trees, but have also ACTIVELY nursed Mulberry, Hackberry, and Locust seedlings to shoot up right there on the proptery line!
The mother Locust tree, of course, is the one I haven't mentioned yet... the one other massive tree in our yard, which is even taller than the Hackberry and the Mulberry.
So, if there's a Hackberry network, and a Mulberry network... and an Ash network that is facilitating Hackberry, Mulberry, and Locust seedlings... then I would think it's safe to say... it's all one network, and all four species are working together.
There's also the anecdote I related a few days ago, about the sudden snow on the night before Halloween in... 2018 or so... where all the trees, on all the island blocks, everywhere, dropped all their leaves in a single night... even though it only went a few degrees below freezing.
That would suggest all the different species, all over town... were very clearly communicating with one another, about the load threat of the heavy, wet snow coming down.
Wollhaben did say that atmospheric communication between trees has, in some cases, extended for hundreds of miles, and that we don't understand yet, how that could be possible.
But he still thinks all such communication is strictly within distinct species.
But he's also the guy who came up with the brilliant theory that deciduous trees shed leaves because of snow load, to begin with!
And he does have stories about... naughty German trees who held on to their leaves too late into October... seeking to gorge themselves on the, "sugary treats," of photosynthesis... that actually DID suffer broken limbs because of it!
So, the fact that my isolated, naughty trees, in the silly zoo that is my city... managed to coordinate a citywide, emergency leaf drop... suggests to me, that my trees... have learned to overlook their differences, and work together... in ways that the forest trees of Germany have not.
In other words... the trees of northern, American urban environments may actually be... less racist toward one another than Wollhaben's trees of the German forest!
If you follow the logic laid out by both Simard (Canadian) and Wollhaben, that trees are intelligent and social creatures... then it might make sense that the intelligent, social trees of the Great Melting Pot, might, in urban settings... have learned to set aside their differences and work together... just as humans in such places do!
That said, it's hard to gauge whether an underground fungal network covers the whole of my block interior, from curb to curb, throughout all the back yards.
I would assume it MUST, given how many giant trees there are, and how insanely well anything that's planted, grows on this block... including a neighbor's corn stalks... but I can't just walk around in my neighbors' yards cataloguing all the species, or the sprouting saplings.
And I don't know the history of what's been going on in every yard.
I can tell you that, most of the huge trees I can see from my back yard have been there for my whole life!.. many of them being monster conifers, and tall maple trees, but there are many others I'm just too ignorant to identify by eye.
Still, my theory for now, is that there likely is, a fully established fungal network that permeates the entire block, and that all the trees, despite being different species, are in communication both underground, and above.
It does not at all strike me as being the kind of park/zoo situation that Wollhaben would imagine, where every tree is just a loner, and they don't recognize or communicate with one another in any way.
°¦}
*Prior to the work of Suzanne Simard, the prevailing viewpoint was that all trees compete with one another in a zero sum game... because all the men presuming this, were capitalists... projecting their capitalist values onto the trees.
Wohllaben accepts Simard's view that trees are actually a lot more caring and generous, and intelligent... but... I feel he may still be projecting onto them... ideas about good and obedient trees, loyal to their species prevailing over lazy, slacker trees who grow crooked and get drunk on sugar, allowing shifty fungi to funnel the spoils to competing species, for their own gain.
