What passes between trees, the nuance of their exchanges, and the seemingly delicate mechanism of their connections-that mystery has inspired a rich new realm of research, and along with it, a subgenre of literature dedicated to spreading a revised conception of the powers and processes that allow arboreal plants to thrive. Yet have we ever really understood trees in the plural? Since the turn of the millennium, a remarkable recasting of our attention-away from the gravitas of individual trees and toward the question of what trees do together, as a collective-has been under way. These ancient pines have been called sages and sentinels, as though it were their edict to stand watch over cycles of human progress and folly.įrom the August 1897 issue: John Muir on the American forests Some rise from saplings at a tempo so slow that they endure through generations, even whole civilizations-thousands of years-living off the ephemeral sustenance that all trees rely on: light, water, a smattering of nutrients drawn from the soil. High up in the Sierra Nevada mountains, bristlecone pines preside-seemingly more stone than wood, partly fossilized. We look to trees for their symbolism, and to have our own comparatively stunted existence put into perspective. Or meditate on Sakura, the cherry blossom, and its instructive transience. As trunk is a synonym for torso, as branch can be interchangeable with limb, trees of great variety (especially the old ones) give body to human concerns.Ĭonsider the coastal eucalyptus, forced by sea winds to grow prostrate along the ground-how the maxim “Better bend than break” takes shape in its supplicating posture. Though the life of a tree has little in common with the life of a person, we are accustomed to approaching trees on personal, even introspective, terms. Robert Frost knew this when he wrote “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.” A woodland is the right spot to yield to reflection. This article was published online on June 17, 2021.Ī bove all else in the plant kingdom, trees make good trellises for our self-regarding thoughts.

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