The Forest As Community

Deep in the Quiet Wood

Are you bowed down in heart?
Do you but hear the clashing discords and the din of life?
Then come away, come to the peaceful wood,
Here bathe your soul in silence. Listen! Now,
From out the palpitating solitude
Do you not catch, yet faint, elusive strains?
They are above, around, within you, everywhere.
Silently listen! Clear, and still more clear, they come.
They bubble up in rippling notes, and swell in singing tones.
Now let your soul run the whole gamut of the wondrous scale
Until, responsive to the tonic chord,
It touches the diapason of God’s grand cathedral organ,
Filling earth for you with heavenly peace
And holy harmonies.

--> “Deep in the Quiet Wood” by James Weldon Johnson, 

published in Fifty Years & Other Poems (The Cornhill Company, 1917). 

Shenandoah National Park, Robinson River

-->

I have always loved trees. Trees evoke something enchanting, magical, and primeval in our psychic - the lovely, dark and deep woods of Robert Frost. But we often overlook the mystery and the magic. For example, in college I learned that forests evolve through survival of the fittest -- individual trees locked in a struggle for resources -- a free-enterprise ecosystem composed of strong, silent types. 

But the forest as a a cauldron of competition with separate, individual trees, each competing for survival, is largely an illusion. Instead, trees like other living things have evolved mechanisms of cooperation as well as competition. As a result, trees are not lone and silent individuals, but a bunch of chattering socialists. 

For example, research is showing that trees regularly emit and respond to cues and signals conveying information; these signals fly from tree to tree, both through the air and underground, in a manner that rivals the Internet.

How do they do this? In a phrase, better living through chemicals. Plants release chemical compounds into the both the air and the soil as a means to signal threats and environmental conditions, or to recognize kin. In this context, think of individual chemical compounds as the words and combinations of the compounds as the sentences. Specific blends of compounds dictate the content of the message.

  

When a giraffe starts chewing leaves from the acacia tree, the tree notices the injury and emits a distress signal in the form of ethylene gas. Upon detecting this gas, neighboring acacias start pumping tannins into their leaves. In large enough quantities tannin can sicken or even kill large herbivores.

Below ground, chemical cues are transmitted via a network of tree roots and fungal hyphae. This mycorrhizal network connects multiple trees (even trees of different species) and can extend across hundreds of acres. Research has shown that this network, among other things, facilitates such tree-to-tree activities as:

·      Signaling water-stress (nearby trees will then respond by closing down their stomata to conserve water and pass along the signal to still others).  

·      Sharing water (Mature trees with deep root systems share water with young seedlings with shallower roots).

·      Sharing food (both nutrients and sugars/carbon)

o   Mature trees sending food to shaded kin seedlings

o   Across species, Douglas fir and paper birch have been shown to exchange food depending on need during the year, and

o   Dying trees have been shown to transfer or “dump” their food reserves to other trees; [Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees]

Why should one tree waste energy clueing in its competitors about a danger or sharing resources with trees of other species? All living things seek to eat, avoid being eaten, and reproduce. The use of mycorrhizal networks by trees is aids all three of these goals. They help trees secure resources, signal threats, and increase the survival of their seedlings. 

David George Haskell in his book The Songs of Trees sums up this unique form of cooperation among trees nicely:

“Although trees … seemingly stand as detached individuals, their lives subvert this … view…. Life is embodied network. These living networks … are where ecological and evolutionary tensions between cooperation and conflict are negotiated and resolved. These struggles often result not in the evolution of stronger, more disconnected selves but in the dissolution of the self into relationship.”

So when you next look at a forest, I hope you see the trees with a bit more wonder and awe, for underneath the silence of the deep, dark woods is a group of chattering socialists sharing resources for the common good.