Recently, my aunt told me she was planning to cut down trees on her Maine tree farm as part of her Forestry Plan. I was glad she is protecting the area of old growth forest on her beautiful farm. Everyone who visits her small patch of mature forest, falls in love with the ancient white pines that stand like sentinels watching over the fern lined, mossy forest as it slopes toward the nearby pond. Oddly enough, I also stumbled across an article in a scientific magazine reviewing the amazing work of Peter Wohlleben who wrote The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate (public library). In it he explains how trees form supportive networks, “families” if you will, nurturing and helping other trees to survive in surprising ways. He discovered this when he found an ancient tree stump felled hundreds of years before that was still alive! Trees nearby were “feeding” it with nutrients and sugars through their roots as well as using an interesting fungal network. Again, I thought of clear cut forests and even woodlands where many, but not all, trees have been culled. Often the few remaining trees die because they have lost their supportive network, their protection from wind, heat and sun provided by nearby trees.
“There are advantages to working together. A tree is not a forest. On its own, a tree cannot establish a consistent local climate. It is at the mercy of wind and weather. But together, many trees create an ecosystem that moderates extremes of heat and cold, stores a great deal of water, and generates a great deal of humidity. And in this protected environment, trees can live to be very old.”
Interesting to me was the discovery that “mother” or parent trees were supporting younger saplings that struggle to reach sunlight in the dense canopy and were unable to easily use photosynthesis to convert sugar into food. Here the older nearby trees helped by sending sugar through their network of roots to feed the younger trees. We need to recognize that forests are families…interconnected ecosystems…and treat them with respect as we consider our forestry plans.
“There are advantages to working together. A tree is not a forest. On its own, a tree cannot establish a consistent local climate. It is at the mercy of wind and weather. But together, many trees create an ecosystem that moderates extremes of heat and cold, stores a great deal of water, and generates a great deal of humidity. And in this protected environment, trees can live to be very old.”
Interesting to me was the discovery that “mother” or parent trees were supporting younger saplings that struggle to reach sunlight in the dense canopy and were unable to easily use photosynthesis to convert sugar into food. Here the older nearby trees helped by sending sugar through their network of roots to feed the younger trees. We need to recognize that forests are families…interconnected ecosystems…and treat them with respect as we consider our forestry plans.
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