The Island of Missing Trees(14)

My guess is humans deliberately avoid learning more about us, maybe because they sense, at some primordial level, that what they find out might be unsettling. Would they wish to know, for instance, that trees can adapt and change their behaviour with purpose, and if this is true, perhaps one does not necessarily depend on a brain for intelligence? Would they be pleased to discover that by sending signals through a network of latticed fungi buried in the soil, trees can warn their neighbours about dangers ahead – an approaching predator or pathogenic bugs – and such stress signals have escalated lately, due to deforestation, forest degradation and droughts, all of them caused directly by humans? Or that the climbing wood vine Boquila trifoliolata can alter its leaves to mimic the shape or colour of those of its supporting plant, prompting scientists to wonder if the vine has some kind of visual capability? Or that a tree’s rings do not only reveal its age, but also the traumas it has endured, including wildfires, and thus, carved deep in each circle, is a near-death experience, an unhealed scar? Or that the smell of a freshly mown lawn, that scent humans associate with cleanliness and restoration and all things new and zestful, is in fact another distress signal issued by grass to warn other flora and ask for help? Or that plants can recognize their kith and kin and feel you touching them, and some, like the Venus flytrap, can even count? Or that trees in the forest can tell when deer are about to eat them, and they defend themselves by infusing their leaves with a type of salicylic acid that helps the production of tannins, which their enemies detest, thus ingeniously repelling them? Or that, until not that long ago, there was an acacia in the Sahara desert – ‘the loneliest tree in the world’, they called it – there at the crossroads of ancient caravan routes, and this miracle of a creature, by spreading its roots far and deep, survived on its own despite the extreme heat and lack of water, until a drunk driver knocked it down? Or that many plants, when threatened, attacked or cut, can produce ethylene, which works like a type of anaesthetic, and this chemical release has been described by researchers as akin to hearing stressed plants screaming?

Most arboreal suffering is caused by humankind.

Trees in urban areas grow faster than trees in rural areas. We also tend to die sooner.

Would people really like to know these things? I don’t think so. Frankly, I am not even sure they see us.

Humans walk by us every day, they sit and sleep, smoke and picnic in our shade, they pluck our leaves and gorge themselves on our fruit, they break our branches, riding them like horses as children or using them to birch others into submission when they become older and crueller, they carve their lover’s name on our trunks and vow eternal love, they weave necklaces out of our needles and paint our flowers into art, they split us into logs to heat their homes and sometimes they chop us down just because we obstruct their view, they make cradles, wine corks, chewing gum and rustic furniture, and produce the most spellbinding music out of us, and they turn us into books in which they lose themselves on cold winter nights, they use our wood to manufacture coffins in which they end their lives, buried six feet under with us, and they even compose romantic poems to us, calling us the link between earth and sky, and yet still they do not see us.

I believe one reason why humans find it hard to understand plants is because, in order to connect with something other than themselves and genuinely care about it, they need to interact with a face, an image that mirrors theirs as closely as possible. The more visible an animal’s eyes, the more sympathy it will receive from humankind.

Cats, dogs, horses, owls, bunny rabbits, pygmy monkeys, even those toothless ostriches that swallow pebbles like berries, they all get their fair share of affection. But snakes, rats, hyenas, spiders, scorpions, sea urchins, not so much … Creatures with the smallest eyes or none at all do not stand a chance. But, then again, nor do trees.

Trees might not have eyes but we have vision. I respond to light. I detect ultraviolet and infrared and electromagnetic waves. If I weren’t buried now, I could tell next time she was nearby whether Ada was wearing her blue coat or her red one.

I adore light. I need it not only to process water and carbon dioxide into sugars, grow and germinate, I also need it to feel safe and secure. A plant always bends towards light. Having figured this out about us, humans use the knowledge to trick and manipulate us for their own ends. Flower farmers turn on the lamps in the middle of the night, deceiving chrysanthemums into blossoming when they shouldn’t. With a bit of light you can make us do so much. With a promise of love …



‘A few months is so long …’ I heard Ada say. She doesn’t know that we measure time differently.

Human-time is linear, a neat continuum from a past that is supposed to be over and done with towards a future deemed to be untouched, untarnished. Every day has to be a brand-new day, filled with fresh events, every love utterly different from the previous one. The human species’ appetite for novelty is insatiable and I’m not sure it does them much good.

Arboreal-time is cyclical, recurrent, perennial; the past and the future breathe within this moment, and the present does not necessarily flow in one direction; instead it draws circles within circles, like the rings you find when you cut us down.

Arboreal-time is equivalent to story-time – and, like a story, a tree does not grow in perfectly straight lines, flawless curves or exact right angles, but bends and twists and bifurcates into fantastical shapes, throwing out branches of wonder and arcs of invention.