Quote:
Originally Posted by Oxman  Was just musing about Wulkowicz's musings in the presentation he gave at the ISA conference in Salt Lake City in '97.
The word picture of those soldierly cambium cells lined up in a row shoulder to shoulder marching inexorably outwards during the growth season remains a part of my conscience.
Tree Gators rule ! |
Wow! Thanks for the long term memory. The nicest thing that happened for me there were the three white-haired arborists who came up afterwards and thanked me for finally explaining how trees worked. (At least, that's how I remember it.)
I am going to try writing again, and it's just your kind of reply that make it not only easier, but even obligatory. Again, I am required to write clearly as best I can for the reader, but I have also learned that some will never listen and I ought to never take that shortfall too seriously.
Along the line of your post, here's a teaser diagram below of the brilliance of the tree cambium design moving inexorably and mathematically outward. The cambium must do this for every increase in girth, and it alters the division of its cells as necessary to maintain the continuity of the circle. (Biology is wet and sloppy, so neither I nor the tree need to bother with fussily precise math--200 million years of evolution beat a math teacher's red pencil every day.)
As simple as this is, it seems few get it. I listen to the dogmatic recitations from textbooks as if the vascular cambium is understood, but it doesn't seem to be internalized in the larger picture of how a tree grows.
It isn't fair of me to give a bit of the puzzle and then complain about an audience; my job is to make my concepts clear and digestible--which often is difficult when many simplicities become the structure of a biological complexity. (See, there I go, becoming an arboreal oofty snoofty.)
In any case, the diagram is correct. Your memory of the marching soldiers is correct. And if they didn't alter their style of cell division as needed, the circle of the tree quickly becomes a thing of spokes, exposed cells vulnerable to pathogens, the sun, and a host of other deadly conditions.
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BTW I corrected the last word in your post by changing "concience" to "conscience" and I apologize for the red pencil intrusion. I thought about it for a while that it could be "conscience" and it could be "science." I'm happy be be in either, or both.
Bob Wulkowicz