Needed: compassion for all nature

4 8 June 2017

ANTE ALIGHIERI opens ‘The Divine

Comedy’ with the immortal lines:

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,

ché la diritta via era smarrita.

(In the middle of the journey of our life

I found myself within a dark wood

where the straight path was lost)

To the medieval mind of Dante, the great for-

ests of Europe were a fearsome spectre of

numinous presences, but by entering the

wood of doubt he gained a deepened aware-

ness. We retain these competing instincts: a

wariness of wilderness that incites conquest,

beside reverence for the sylvan mysteries. It

is this latter instinct that requires nurturing.

On a recent visit to Italy I embarked with a

friend on a ramble towards Mount Sole near

Bologna. This park had been the scene of a

ﬁnal battle in April 1945 between the Allies

and Germans, along with their Italian fascist

allies. Unfortunately our time was short, and

as we ascended the narrow path, wending

steeply through dense woodland towards the

summit, a lengthy walk seemed imminent.

In order to return for an appointment we had

a decision to make. We had three alternatives:

follow the path in the hope it would soon loop

backwards; return the way we came; or take a

short cut by descending directly through the

thick deciduous forest ﬂanking us. Contrary

to good sense, we chose the latter course.

Initially we divined a trail through the thick

ets of hornbeams and Turkey oaks – laid

perhaps by the native cinghiale (wild boar) –

but these soon lapsed as the descent became

more precipitous. By then we were using

trees, many tilted at curious angles, to lever

ourselves like ﬁremen down an increasingly

sheer slope.

This is when it became slightly dangerous

as a surprising number seemed dead, giving

way at the slightest pressure. The humous

around the trees was also amazingly loose,

and over some stretches we slid down soil that

felt like snow.

We had arrived in a natural sanctuary, and

were cutting a swathe through it like a pair of

conquistadores rampaging through an Indian

village with steel. The acute angle of the hill

side made this a route only the most foolhardy

of large fauna would descend.

In remote areas such as these we ﬁnd frag

ile remains of unmolested old-growth

European forests, although in these condi

tions only hardier species are in evidence,

rather than the great beeches that once domi-

nated the continent. This was, nonetheless,

an impressive ecosystem that concentrates

great wealth in the soil, and where old trees

are allowed to live out their days in peace.

Until we arrived that is.

Then my friend’s foot came in contact with

a hard metal object in the brittle soil, which on

inspection proved to be a gun cartridge.

Old-growth deciduous

forests are superior

in resilience and ﬁre

resistance

by Frank Armstrong

Needed:

compassion for

all nature

A deciduous forest is not

susceptible to ﬁre: it lacks

resins or essential oils,

and must be seasoned

for two years before it can

serve as fuel

ENVIRONMENT

June 2017 4 9

Wiping away the earth revealed the inscription:

“RH 1943 20mm”. A subsequent Internet trawl

showed that it was a Spitﬁre Cartridge manufac-

tured by the Raleigh Corporation in 1943. Bob’s

Your Uncle!

By happenstance I was then reading the

German forester Peter Wohlleben’s remarkable

little book: ‘The Hidden Life of Trees: What they

feel, How they communicate; Discoveries from a

secret world’. It seems we had made another,

less explosive, discovery.

“On hillsides”, he writes, “it is sometimes the

ground itself that is sliding extremely slowly

down to the valley over the course of many years,

often at the rate of no more than an inch or two

a year”. He continues: “Trees are losing their

footing and being thrown completely off balance

in the mushy subsoil. And because every indi-

vidual tree is tipped in a different direction, the

forest looks like a group of drunks staggering

around. Accordingly, scientists call these

‘drunken trees’”.

Coincidentally, on returning home to Ireland

stories were emerging of one of the worst ﬁres

in living memory on thousands of acres of Coilte

land in Cloosh Valley, east Galway. I knew this

had to be coniferous cash crop as Wohlleben

points out that a deciduous forest is not suscep-

tible to ﬁre: it lacks resins or essential oils, and

must be seasoned for two years before it can

serve as fuel.

Conversely, the destruction of non-native

evergreens offers a rare opportunity to use the

site to reduce Ireland’s contribution to Climate

Change. The great deciduous varieties are vast

carbon storehouses, and incredible photosyn-

thesisers (releasing oxygen in the process): just

to grow its trunk, a mature beech requires as

much sugar and cellulose as that yielded from a

2.5 acre ﬁeld of wheat. This demands over 150

years, so our descendants are sure to be very

grateful for measures taken today.

If we assume (conservatively) 500 such beech

trees grow on one acre, this offers space for 1250

trees on a 2.5 acre site. Its (stored) energy value

can be calculated as follows: over one hundred

and ﬁfty years a wheat ﬁelds gathers an energy

value of 150x (where ‘x’ is one year’s sugar and

cellulose from a 2.5 acre site); whereas an acre

of undisturbed beech trees offers 1250x for that

period.

This is both a potential energy source (that

would eventually yield a fossil fuel) with over

eight times more capacity than a wheat ﬁeld,

unsurprisingly considering heights of 150 feet.

This leaves aside potential food (assuming we

learn to process trees nuts better) and medicinal

sources. Moreover, the expanding humous

around trees contains vast carbon reserves, and

trees, unlike wheat and most other crops, ﬁx

their own nitrogen. Sufﬁce to say, old-growth

forests are the leading weapon in the battle

against Climate Change.

According to Wohlleben the best thing to do in

order to generate growth on a site is absolutely

nothing, leaving Nature (relying on birds to carry

seeds) to ﬁnd a balance. In Ireland this will give

us a summit vegetation of oak and hazel, which

given the opportunity would colonize the whole

country, and offer only marginally less bulk than

beech. As it is, old-growth forests are virtually

absent in the least-wooded substantial Euro-

pean country, which, paradoxically, has some of

the best conditions for tree growth.

Contrary to common perception it was not the

English that stripped Ireland of its woodland. A

mere 12% of old-growth forests remained by the

fourteenth century on account of an accelerating

livestock dependence.

Forests must be left to their own devices.

Wohlleben writes that: “If we want to use forests

as a weapon in the ﬁght against climate change,

then we must allow them to grow old”. Unlike

animals, the older the tree the more quickly it

grows. In fact trees that grow too quickly in their

youth are susceptible to fungal diseases, making

the use of artiﬁcial fertilizers in nurseries

damaging.

Stripping away dead trees is also misguided

as these serve a purpose in the forest ecosys-

tem, with one ﬁfth of species relying on dead

wood for survival. The complexity of even our

temperate forests is staggering, as just one

handful of soil contains a greater variety of spe-

cies than all seven billion human beings in the

world. Moreover, healthy forests guarantee

clean water and air quality. Researchers have

even discovered that a walk in a deciduous wood

lowers blood pressure.

It is also worth contemplating the arboreal

wonders that Wohlleben reveals. Trees are more

complex, and intelligent, than might be

expected. They communicate with one another

using an array of languages including scent from

blossoms, and electrical signals that travel at a

third of an inch per minute. This allows trees to

warn their friends if they are under attack. Chem

ical signals are also made through fungal

networks around root tips, a so-called “wood

wide web”.

In a natural forest trees grow at an even pace

despite differences in topography and orienta

tion. They manage resources collectively by

feeding weaker members, ensuring uniform

height. This comes about because when a forest

confronts adverse weather it is only as strong as

its weakest member. Unfortunately cultivated

trees do not possess these qualities, leading

Wohlleben to liken them to street kids.

Scientists have explanations for some of their

remarkable capabilities, but others remain

veiled in mystery. These can be observed but not

explained.

The ability of plants to learn from external

stimuli has been exhibited in Dr Monica Gagli-

ano’s experiments on the sensitive mimosa

plant. Gagliano released individual drops of

water on the plant’s foliage at regular intervals.

At ﬁrst the anxious plants instantly closed their

leaves, mistaking the single droplets for the

onset of heavy rainfall, but after a number of

doses the plants learned these were harmless

and kept their leaves open. Remarkably, these

small plants could remember and apply their

lesson weeks later.

The size of deciduous trees means their

behaviour cannot so easily be assessed in a lab-

oratory, but Wohlleben observes a form of

learning in the way they grow sturdy trunks in

response to aches and pains. Likewise he says,

they count the number of warm days along with

the hours of sunshine at the start of spring,

before deciding when to put out leaves.

This leads Wohlleben to ask: “If trees are

capable of learning… then the question becomes:

Where do they store what they have learnt and

how do they access the information”. He sug-

gests the answer may lie in their roots tips but

there is no evidence of any “hard drive”, such as

an animal’s central nervous system.

Rupert Sheldrake’s hypothesis of morphic res-

onance might explain their habits. He suggests

that once a particular form comes into existence

it creates a non-material morphic ﬁeld, that has

a causal effect on all subsequent, similar forms;

and the more a particular form is replicated, the

more likely it is to replicate in future. It is possi

ble that after billions of years of trees have

evolved a “cloud” of knowledge through mor-

phic resonance that is not located in the plant

itself.

Another mystery is how trees lift water from

the ground up through their long trunks, a capac-

ity scientists have, so far, been unable to

explain. Neither capillary action nor transpira-

tion untangle the riddle: capillary action, similar

5 0 June 2017

to our bloodstream, only accounts for a rise of 3

feet at most; nor does transpiration through

leaves breathing apply, as water pressure is

highest in early spring when there are no leaves

at all.

Water has its own mysterious properties as a

New Scientist article from 2010 acknowledges:

“No liquid behaves quite as oddly as water”. It

is conceivable given the length, and success, of

their evolution that trees have an understanding

of these oddities that exceeds our own. The cool

temperature trees constantly maintain at their

base, which may diverge as much as thirty

degrees centigrade from the ambient tempera-

ture on a very hot day, lend credence to

seemingly whacky theories, but which might

relate to the ‘uncertainty’ of its quantum

properties.

Another forester, the Austrian Viktor Schau-

berger (1885-1958) pointed to an “anomaly

point” of water at four degrees centigrade as

being key to understanding its behaviour. At this

temperature he said that energy currents in

water, not obviously apparent, are at their most

powerful. This he claimed, allowed a trout to dart

at lightning speed against the rapid ﬂow of a

river.

To demonstrate this he poured 100 litres of

warmed water upstream from a large trout,

which was unable to maintain its position in the

altered temperature and was swept away. He

also used his esoteric ideas on water energy to

build a watercourse for the transportation of

logs, a successful invention a patent for which

he was granted in 1931.

Perhaps trees operate a similar system, based

on the temperature differential between the

crown of a tree and its roots. This is all, naturally,

speculative.

Exploring the majesty of tree life should bring

us into sympathy with what we know of them,

and their secrets. But a countervailing tendency

is a fear of what we cannot understand, and con-

trol. The despicable Judge Holden in Cormac

McCarthy’s novel ‘Blood Meridian’ expresses an

attitude that has long animated colonial expan-

sion and ecocide: “The man who believes that

the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives

in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him

down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life”.

In contrast, he characterises Western man as

“suzerain”, “a keeper or overlord”, who exerts

control over all life on earth. He says that: “What-

ever in creation exists without my knowledge

exists without my consent.” The Judge cannot

tolerate Nature independent of man: “The free-

dom of birds is an insult to me. I’d have them all

in zoos”. This has been one trend since the

Enlightenment seeking mastery over Nature, and

needs rapid reappraisal if humanity is to strike

a balance in this, the Anthropocene.

We may reach back to older traditions of

Pachamama in South America to confront this

attitude. Thus the Kichwa of Sarayaku in Ecuador

see their forest as “the most exalted expression

of life itself”. More recently the Swiss Constitu

tion requires account to be taken “of the dignity

of creation when handling animals, plants and

other organisms”. Hopefully we will move

towards global acceptance of Wild Law: the idea

that all beings have inherent rights.

Wohlleben reveals a blind spot when he sug

gests the distinction between a plant and an

animal is arbitrary. This may offer an excuse for

an unwillingness to give up environmentally-

destructive animal products. Leaving aside this

ethical question momentarily, Wohlleben links

the historic destruction of European forests to

the expansion of livestock, and the artiﬁcial

feeding of deer which would not normally inhabit

forests for hunting.

The best measure we can take to prevent fur

ther deforestation and even generate

afforestation is to give up animal products.

Deforested land around the world is used for

grazing, and indirectly to grow crops to feed

domesticated animals, representing a

signiﬁcant wastage in food resources. There

fore, excluding animal products leads more

space for (sentient?) trees.

Moreover, the moral equivalence between kill-

ing a plant and an animal for our consumption

does not stand up to scrutiny since, as notwith-

standing their intelligence, plants lack the

central nervous system of an animal. It is clear

that a tree does not feel pain in the same way as

an animal, or ourselves. The challenge is to

extend our compassion even further to embrace

all of Nature, rather than withdrawing it from

animals.

In order to survive as a species, human beings

must reserve land for farming at least until our

understanding of food sources in Nature greatly

increases. But in so doing there is much that we

can learn from trees, and their environments, to

improve the quality and resilience of our crops.

In the Anthropocene we need to counter the ten

dency of the Judge Holdens among us towards

subjugation of Nature, and instead, like Dante,

enter the sylvan mysteries in search of Paradise.

According to Wohlleben the

best thing to do in order to

generate growth on a site is

absolutely nothing, yielding us

a summit vegetation of oak and

hazel, which would colonise the

whole country

ENVIRONMENT

June 2017 5 1

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