TREES
Red Pine Tree
Red Pine Tree
Maple Tree Bark
Maple Tree Bark
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
-From "Trees " by Joyce Kilmer
TREES
There once was a woodsman who worked very hard but was never content.
One day, a old hermit saw him in the woods and the two men got to
talking. At the end of a pleasant hour, the wise man revealed that he
had special powers and would grant the woodsman three wishes. He was
told to call out "Raven, Raven, Raven" and he would come to grant his
wish. The woodsman thought for a moment and said, "I want a wish now. I
am lonely and would like a wife to share my bed and keep me warm at
night."
That evening, on his way home from work he passed a maiden traveling in
the same direction. She had long hair the color of a red pine tree that
sparkled in the sun. They smiled at each other and fell instantly in
love. The couple got married and before long they had five children,
three boys and two girls. After the birth of their fifth child, the
woodsman's wife complained that they needed a larger house, one that
reflected his improved station in life, for he had become a lumberman
who wore a shirt and tie to work.
The woodsman remembered the hermit he met in his youth. It had been a
long time since their last meeting but he called out to see if he was a
man of his word. "Raven, Raven, Raven," he cried and the old man
appeared in his office. "My wife complains that the roof over our head
is too small," the woodsman said. "I need a house that makes her happy
and impresses my business partners.
That evening when he returned from work, his wife had a smile like the
one she had when they first met. She stood in front of a large red door
with a brass knocker the size of his forearm. The mansion before him
had eight majestic columns that supported a porch with rocking chairs
and a rocking horse for their youngest child. Inside were seven
bedrooms and a dining room table made of the finest mahogany that was
large enough to accommodate family and friends. The woodsman was
content watching his children grow up, marry, and have children of
their own.
One day, the woodsman looked in the mirror and saw wrinkles and hair
that was grey. He went to the office but could only work a few hours
before his back started hurting. It wouldn't be long before he died, he
thought. He started to brood, began drinking too much, and complained
about the unfairness of life to all who would listen. Sitting alone in
his rocker one day, he remembered he had one more wish to ask of the
hermit. "Raven, Raven, Raven," he shouted in a grumpy, demanding voice.
The old man appeared at once. "What do you want now?" he asked annoyed.
"You have everything you need and gold bars in the vault for
retirement."
"Use your magic to make me live longer than anything else on earth. I
will watch life pass through the ages and be the most powerful man that
ever lived," the woodsman said.
In the blink of an eye, the hermit disappeared and the woodsman was
turned into a 300-year-old bristlecone pine. It was cool in the woods
where he stood though the earth warmed outside the forest. He stood
majestically tall by a trail overhearing young lovers pass and enjoying
the feel of wind as it rustled its limbs. "I have good genes and will
live to be 5,000 years old and will be the oldest and wisest tree in
the woods," he bragged to his neighbors. "I'll know all that is
happening and watch people come and go as the years pass."
Then, one day, a lumberman came by and saw the tree standing taller
than any tree in the woods. "Let's cut it down, he said to his partner.
We'll make a lot of money and have firewood left over to bring home to
our wives." And so they did. And so the forest died.
__________
I love trees. Many of my walks are at the arboretum where I'm
especially aware of the shape and feel of the bark of various species.
On narrow trails, it is difficult to look up at the crown of a tree
without tripping on a root as I walk, so my eyes stay closer to earth.
When I look around it is at head level where I take note of the trees'
bark. I am surprised at how soft and spongy California Redwoods and
Giant Sequoias feel to the touch as compared to native Douglas Fir
trees. Some bark is dark with deep furrows like the lines that gouge an
old person's face while other bark is lined with long textured strands.
It's good to remember how these beautiful organisms cool the earth with
their shade and release oxygen so we can breathe. Recent research shows
they also communicate with each other. I wonder what they say as I walk
by.
Best selling author and forester, Peter Wohlleben, in The Hidden Life
of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate, wrote that trees of the
same species are communal and form alliances with trees of other
species. Botanists call his discovery of an underground fungal network
the "wood-wide web." They share water and nutrients through networks
and communicate information about drought, disease and insect attacks.
Distress signals are dispatched through hairlike root tips that join
together with microscopic fungal filaments they use to send chemical,
hormonal and slow-pulsing electrical signals that scientists are just
beginning to decipher. They also communicate through the air, using
scent signals.
When Wohlleben attended forestry school he was taught that trees needed
to be thinned, that helicopter-spraying of pesticides and herbicides
was essential, and that heavy machinery was the best logging equipment,
even though it tears up soil. He worked this way for more than 20 years
until he visited a few privately managed forests in Germany, which were
not thinned, sprayed or logged by machines. "The trees were so much
bigger and more plentiful," he observed. "Very few trees needed to be
felled to make a handsome profit and it was done using horses to
minimize the impact."
Trees alter their behavior when they receive distress messages. For
instance, trees in Africa can make their leaves taste bad when giraffes
start nibbling on nearby branches. Trees lend sugars where there are
deficits from seasonal changes which is particularly beneficial between
deciduous and coniferous trees.
At the University of British Columbia in Vancourver Canada, Suzanne
Simmard and her grad students study the sensitivity and
interconnectedness of trees in the temperate rainforests of western
North America. She identified some trees as hub trees, or "mother
trees."
Mother trees are the largest trees in forests and act as central hubs
for the network below-ground. For young saplings trying to survive in a
shaded part of the forest, the network is a lifeline. Mother trees
support seedlings by injecting them with a sugary fungi. They change
their root structure to make room for baby trees. Simmard says that to
have resilient forests in an era of rapid climate change, large trees
need to be conserved for they form the heart of a forest's
communication network and are the lifeblood of the next generation.
* * *
Forests compose over 30 percent of the world's land area, but are
disappearing at an alarming rate. Between 1990 and 2016, 502,000 square
miles were lost, an area larger than South Africa. Eighty percent of
the Earth's land animals and plants live in forests. Over 250,000
million people reside there and depend on trees for subsistence and
income.
Countries that preserve forest ecosystems give conservationists a
reason to hope. In addition to reducing carbon emissions and
deforestation, billions of trees need to be planted across the globe
and a sprinkling of nations are heeding their call. The Billion tree
Campaign is managed by the nonprofit Plant for the Planet Foundation.
Tree planing is the biggest and cheapest ways of taking CO2 out of the
atmosphere to tackle the climate crisis. But, we need to start now
because it will take 50 -100 years to reach its full effect of removing
200bn tonnes of carbon.
Below is the ranking of the top 100 countries in terms of how many
trees they've planted last year.
Country - # Trees Planted
1. China - - 2,407,149,493
2. India - - 2,159,420,898
3. Ethiopia - - 1,725,350,234
4. Pakistan - - 1,006,776,724
5. Mexico - - 789,307,032
6. Turkey - - 711,103,088
7. Peru - - 646,502,236
8. Nigeria - - 626,725,667
9. Kenya - - 534,680,609
10. United States - - 315,586,982
A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know
they shall never sit in."
--Greek Proverb
Image 3720018
KNOW YOUR TREES, REMEMBER YOUR BIOLOGY
There are five parts to a tree;
1. Crown - The top of the tree is the crown, made up of the leaves
and branches that come in many shapes and sizes. The crown has numerous
jobs. It shades the roots, collects energy from the sun
(photosynthesis), and keeps it cool by removing extra water.
2. Roots - Trees have a lot of underground roots - the size of the
root system is usually as big as the part of the tree above the ground.
This is essential because the roots help support the tree so it won't
fall over, but its main job is to collect water and nutrients from the
soil and to store them for times when there isn't as much available.
3. Leaves - Leaves, part of the crown of a tree, convert energy
into food, which is mostly sugar. They contain chlorophyll which gives
leaves their green color. Chlorophyll is a critical biomolecule, used
in photosynthesis which leaves use the sun's energy to convert carbon
dioxide from the atmosphere and water from the soil into sugar and
oxygen. The tree's food or sugar is either used or stored in the roots,
trunk, and branches. The oxygen from this process is released back into
the atmosphere.
4. Branches - Branches serve as support to distribute the leaves
efficiently for the type of tree and the environment. They are conduits
for water and nutrients and store extra sugar.
5. Trunk - The tree gets its shape and support from the trunk
which holds up the crown. The trunk is the main transportation water
and nutrients from the soil and sugar from the leaves. The bark,
cambium, heartwood, phloem, and xylem are the five different layers
that make up the trunk.
The outer bark is a protective layer made up of dead cells, much like
fingernails. The inner bark, made of living cells, is mainly there to
carry sap full of sugar from the leaves to the rest of the tree. The
Cadmium is the layer of living cells inside the bark that makes new
cells to allow the tree to grow wider each year.
Sapwood (Xylem) is a network of living cells that bring water and
nutrients up from the roots to the branches and leaves. In the center
of the trunk is the heartwood. It is dead sapwood and is the hardest
part of the tree, giving it strength. Pith, in the very center of the
tree has tiny dark spot of spongy living cells that carry essential
nutrients up through the pith. Since it is in the center it is
protected from damage by insects, the wind or animals.
IMG-0436
Image 3720126
References:
Story is an adaptation of a folktale I read years ago. I do not
remember the source. Photos were taken while walking the Markham Trail
in Portland.
Grand, R. (2018) Do Trees Talk to Each Other? Ask Smithsonian.
retrieved from
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering-trees-18096
8084/
Nunez, C. (2019) Deforestation. National Geographic. retrieved from
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/deforestat
ion/
Stanton, K. (2019) Which Countries are Planting the Most trees?
UnitGuide. retrieved from
https://www.uniguide.com/countries-planting-the-most-trees/
Carrington, D. (2019) Tree planting 'has mind-blowing potential' to
tackle climate crisis. The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/04/planting-billions-tr
ees-best-tackle-climate-crisis-scientists-canopy-emissions
Kahn, S (2019) A Group of Scientists Suggest that plants Feel Pain. The
Scientist. retrieved from
https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/24473/20191218/a-group-of-scientis
ts-suggest-that-plants-feel-pain.htm
_________________
I enjoy hearing from you. Please comment on my blog site.
Art is always for sale. Contact me at marilynne@eichingerfineart.com
Japanese Red Pine is a mixed media piece that includes tree bark. It's
base is acrylic on deep canvas / 20" by 16" / $325.
The Maple Tree Bark is acrylic on deep canvas / 20" by 16" / $325.
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