Sentience in Trees

wulkowicz

You all might enjoy this....


Read Message #4203 in 4) Bob Wulkowicz - Essays (Read Only)




bob wulkowicz

Sean Freeman

Thanks for that Bob and the post in the tree hugger thread I have long been an admirer of your musings and feel very pleased to be able to have an exchange if not face to face the keyboard to keyboard....I put this together to amuse my wife thought you might get a giggle too.

poster25102010.jpg

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Sean

Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.
- Kahlil Gibran

TreeDimensional

Sean, THATS GOOD, assuming that Leon is a dog! In Saskatchewan the reason a male dog does that is because he CAN. It may have a lot to do with being the weaker sex. (male) LOL

wulkowicz

Thank you.

The poster is exactly what it should be. My return to mumblings has now been rewarded by a remarkably good response--and a quick one at that.

I'll be doing a bit of confrontational writing on roots, but first I gotta find my cup.

bob


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p.s.

Do athletes wear cups to spare the public any views of a bench of football players, for example, doing it because they can?

Underwor

Bob, It has been so long since I have heard from you I wondered if your end of NS just washed out to sea. Good to have you back and stirring the pot. I am still warping those young minds.

__________________
Bob Underwood, Associate Professor of Forestry
ND School of Forestry
Minot State University - Bottineau Campus
Bottineau, North Dakota

treeseer

Can trees communicate clearly with a run-on sentience?

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Guy Meilleur | Forensic Arborist | Better Tree Care

mdvaden

Maybe the reason that tree's don't have sentience, is because they lack a will.

Haven't heard of one having an organ resembling a brain either.

Maybe the 3 go hand in hand: brain - will - sentience.

Probably because they best serve their purpose without those. If they had those, they would serve a different purpose.

And what would "fill their boots" if they did not serve their purpose.

Could you imagine a world where trees left the role of trees, and tried to assume the role of people or animals that had a will?

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Grove of Redwood TITANS

Oregon BIGOOT trap

wulkowicz

(A Muttering from Years Past)


The Olde Oak Tale


As a matter of philosophy and ethic, I try to only watch trees and have them teach me. I don't intervene as a rule and most all I've muttered and lectured about includes minimal intervention and staying one's hand until things seem a little more clear.

Some say this likely is the result of growing up shorter than most and having a big nose--a kind of delayed adolescent inferiority complex that has me much too much compassionate about trees. But, it does have its advantages as trees don't generally shy away from me and tend to let me see the things they engage in with considerably less suspicion.

I did once find a tree notebook (old bark with twiglet scratches on it) at the base of a live oak in North Carolina; the kind of thing trees keep hidden from humans to keep people from understanding that trees may be smarter than they seem.

Usually those items are kept out of sight and a tree fills out this journal at night when photosynthesis is shut down and snoopy people and arborists are off partying.

This oak happens to be a very wise creature by virtue of his old age; he's been through many hurricanes and still squatted right where he was laid whilst many other young impudent upstarts have been flattened by the coastal storms. I was pleased to come across his log, as it were, and was able to make out a few things.

Mind you, it's very difficult to talk tree--as you might already have found out, if you've ever been to any conventions where a bunch of experts are jabbering at each other about knowing everything treeal--and it's a damn sight harder to read tree. So, I could only translate a few observations from what would seem to be a live oak as arboreal historian/philosopher by trade:

"There are two events," the live oak wrote, "that contributed to the decline of the relationships between trees and humans. The first was the invention of the opposable thumb. The second was the invention of the chain saw."

"Those fools were once content to just live in us and we could stay in harmony. Then they climbed down and figured out how to work those damn thumbs and that was the beginning of the end. Every creature/historian I know links the decline of the planet to them people wandering around wiggling those ugly little thumbs."

"Chain saws were the icing on the cake--and you can't really use one without thumbs, which proves my point." "They all weren't very bright to begin with," the scratches continued, "but with a chain saw they could be a lot stupider faster."


There was a rustle in the leaves, and a little startled, I slid the bark back into the hollow beneath one large root and walked quietly away. Trying not to disturb the old beast, wandering a little, thinking about what he had written.

I decided he was wrong in his appraisal of the harmonies between man and tree. We only did what was good for them and they just didn't know it.

The chain saw was an awesome tool, I opined, as was pointed out in a recent post, "Most impressed!" Wed, 3 Oct 2001, and humanity was really getting up to speed. with things like the all terrain MEWP. Hell, we were really rockin'!

Besides, that all was silly about opposable thumbs. If thumbs were important, we'd a been born with all thumbs.

But then again that would have made it harder to pick our collective noses. And on the distaff side, it would have been a hell of a lot easier to keep our thumbs in our...


Hmmmm. Maybe that's what the old oak meant--if we had stayed in trees, we'd have stayed out of trouble and harmony would never have left.


Bob Wulkowicz

treevet

I enjoyed this piece. Did you write this Bob?. Maybe we should be titled Interventionists instead of Arborists, often responding to perceived maladies, real or unreal, often caused by us in the first place.

mdvaden

That's partially how I look at it, but in a figurative sense. On my home page is a statement about blending lessons from nature with landscape technology.

But I think the teaching stems from self-teaching and how my educators taught me to glean and evaluate information. So the trees provide the examples which can be used for a learning tool.

But in basic simple everyday speech, it's reasonable to say that the trees teach.

In fact, that's how I learned that "lion's tailiing" was bad, years before I heard about it from a book or a class.

In a way, I tend to view trees as providing "testimony" as witnesses. Trees don't lie and they basically can't make a mistake.

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Grove of Redwood TITANS

Oregon BIGOOT trap

wulkowicz

Yes indeed, I did write that.

Quite some time ago in fact. and I was warmed in the cockles of me cockles that despite the piece being dated, it was still very appropriate in a forum about things being pruned.

Here is another wulkowism, dated as well, but still expressive of my persistent distaste for responding to perceived maladies, real or unreal, often caused by us in the first place.

Homosapien erectus var 'Chainsaw'

The pathogen Homosapien erectus var 'Chainsaw' has a frequently predictable pattern of destruction in trees. Usually, the creatures work from the bottom up in a fashion that might be considered sluggish, indiscriminate, and as only far as the creatures can reach without effort.

There are also sub-sets of the species that have the capacity for imitating human speech and have been known to burble "included bark," "included bark," "included bark," while chewing away at multiple stems. It is thought by some investigators that this is an auditory shield used to distract other life forms from intervening in its feedings.

The pathogen is also capable of other extended camoflague including sounding sincere and possessing a distribution of chitinous scales resembling ISA Certified Arborists patches covering the top half of the body.

At the present time, there is no form of effective control for the pathogens, except perhaps their wives. Beer has been established to have a stuporous effect which limits their range of destruction and has been observed to result in some creatures leaving trees vertically at high rates of speed. The presence of this phenomenon is evidenced by shallow depressions in the ground and a scattering of fecal droppings of aluminum cylinders.

The destructive powers of this pathogen is disproportionate to its body weight and it is one of the few species that feeds more than necessary to sustain its life processes.

Although all investigators do not yet agree, its mating calls are understood to be high-pitched whirring sounds. This disagreement between some scholars comes from observations that the sounds seem to attract no one. The pertinent question, at present, is why do they persist? Again, some have argued this is reflective of a low pathogenic IQ. Others have disagreed, saying it is a vestigial or genetic residue of earlier, better times.

The jury is not yet in on the verdict. Preventative measures include tire shredding barricades, citronella candles, and laying books about scientology at the base of potential victim trees.

A fat woman with a broom has also enjoyed some success as a deterrent in Zones 4 and 5.


Bob Wulkowicz

treevet

[quote=wulkowicz;21707]Yes indeed, I did write that.

Quite some time ago in fact. and I was warmed in the cockles of me cockles that despite the piece being dated, it was still very appropriate in a forum about things being pruned.

Here is another wulkowism, dated as well, but still expressive of my persistent distaste for responding to perceived maladies, real or unreal, often caused by us in the first place.

Homosapien erectus var 'Chainsaw'

A new cover spray of a chemical called "Knowledge" wp (TM) to runoff is said to give some control. Unfortunately, most companies find the product too costly and too slow in exhibiting noticeable results (adversely effecting the bottom line). On the up side users have found the chemical persistent in the environment through ground water, and actually and strangely causing beneficial effects.

"Loving trees to death", Al Shigo

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 concience.

Tree Gators rule !

wulkowicz

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

Attached Images

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Underwor

Wulky, You realize that you make it harder for me to explain tree biology every time you pick up a pen don't you!!! The problem is I almost always agree with you. We have to get together sometime again in the near future, just to stir our old cranial juices up a little. Keep me thinking.
By the way, your little picture here will show up in class in the next couple of days.

__________________
Bob Underwood, Associate Professor of Forestry
ND School of Forestry
Minot State University - Bottineau Campus
Bottineau, North Dakota

Underwor

This picture of the ray cells of basswood entering the phloem and its growth, which is mirroring the xylem growth somewhat kind of shows your principle in action, right?

http://165.234.175.12/photos/Arbor/Basswood%202.jpg

__________________
Bob Underwood, Associate Professor of Forestry
ND School of Forestry
Minot State University - Bottineau Campus
Bottineau, North Dakota