Sublime

A healthy forest must need dead trees. They’ve been around since the beginning. Birds turn them to use, and small mammals, and more forms of insects lodge and dine on them than science has ever counted. She wants to raise her hand and say, like Ovid, how all life is turning into other things. But she doesn’t have the data.

assistance may either be delivered remotely by fungal networks around the root tips—which facilitate nutrient exchange between trees1—or the roots themselves may be interconnected.2

Needles increase the surface area the tree presents to the wind, and

Sooner or later, a forked tree usually breaks apart, leaving the more stable half standing. This half-tree survives for a few more decades but not much longer. The large gaping wound never heals, and fungi begin to devour the tree slowly from the inside out.

When people ignore these boundaries and bring spruce and pines down to warmer elevations, these conifers are not natives in this new location; they are immigrants. And with that we have arrived at my favorite example: red wood ants.

“It’s a great idea, trees. So great that evolution keeps inventing it, again and again.”

Usando a rede subterrânea, elas assumiram o fornecimento interrompido das raízes e possibilitaram a sobrevivência de suas companheiras.

Similar processes are at work in our forests here at home. Beeches, spruce, and oaks all register pain as soon as some creature starts nibbling on them. When a caterpillar takes a hearty bite out of a leaf, the tissue around the site of the damage changes. In addition, the leaf tissue sends out electrical signals, just as human tissue does when it

Deciduous trees, after all, show that there are other ways of doing things. As long as they’re alive, they’re absolutely immune to fire. This is something you can easily test for yourself (but please with just a single green twig). No matter how long you hold a flame underneath it, the twig will not burn. Spruce, Pines & Co., in contrast, ignit