CHAPTER 1

STANDING LIKE A TREE

I often walk among the ancient soaring coast redwood trees in Muir Woods, thenational park close to where I live in California. I have to crane my neck tolook up at them, much like a toddler who would otherwise just see kneecaps orlegs of adults. Though in proportion to the height of these trees, I'm not evenat toenail level. These tall conifers are descendants of the green leafy treeferns and first trees, without which Earth would not have breathable air, soil,or rainwater. As the BBC documentary Planet Earth succinctly said of ourbiological relationship to trees, "If they didn't live here, neither would we."My study of trees began with looking up specific information about the Montereypine (Pinus radiata), which is how I learned why it had been particularly suitedto where I live. About the same time, I had begun a practice of taking earlymorning walks in Muir Woods. Both led me metaphorically deeper into the trees.

My wonder of trees keeps growing as I learn more about what they are and do. Ithas also been learning for the sake of it. Trees seem so ordinary and familiarand unmoving: they just stand wherever they took root and, until we know better,don't seem to be doing anything much. Those with the oldest lineage are membersof the conifer family. The conifers do nothing showy—no autumn colors, springblossoms, or glorious fruit—but when they are noticed and we understand howwonderful they are, a depth and poetic appreciation can result. Out of theirwonder and love of the trees they study, naturalists have written about themwith poetic sensibility. John Muir, America's most famous and influentialnaturalist, for example, described a juniper as "a sturdy storm-enduringmountaineer of a tree, living on sunshine and snow, maintaining tough health onhis diet for perhaps more than a thousand years" (Muir, My First Summer in theSierra, 1911, p. 146). Muir's ability to describe what he saw in the highSierras and Yosemite Valley, to write of the awe he felt in the presence of theancient redwoods, and to influence others had a significant role in preservingthem, including Muir Woods.

In The Tree, a comprehensive book on the subject, the English author andnaturalist Colin Tudge compares the building of a beautiful cathedral with how atree grows, a comparison in which the tree comes out ahead:

[A] cathedral or a mosque is built; it does not grow. Until it is complete it isuseless, and probably unstable. It must be held up by scaffold. When it isfinished it remains as it was made for as long as it lasts—or until some laterarchitect designs it afresh, and rebuilds. A tree, by contrast, may grow to betall as a church and yet must be fully functional from the moment it germinates.It must fashion and refashion itself as it grows, for as it increases in size sothe stresses alter—the tension and compression on each part. To achieve hugenessand yet be self-building—no scaffold or outside agencies required—and to operatefor good measure as an independent living creature through all phases of growthis beyond anything that human engineers have achieved. (2006, p. 75)

What Exactly Is a Tree?

Trees are arboreal perennials: they have a columnar woody stem with branchesgrowing from it. The height varies according to the specific species,environment, and various other factors, though normally they reach a height oftwenty feet (six meters) or more. The shape and general development of a treeare so characteristic that the category also includes species of lesser size,such as dwarf trees.

In the delightful way that the English have with words, Colin Tudge begins hisanswer with what every child knows: "A tree is a big plant with a stick up themiddle" (The Tree, p. 3) and proceeds to be eloquent and scientific, a smallpart of which I paraphrase and pass on here.

Some two to three billion years ago, a layer of vegetation grew upon barrenrocks—a slime perhaps no thicker than a coat of paint, made of bacteria, molds,mosses, lichens, algae, and fungi. Chlorophyll in algae made the slime greenishand photosynthesis possible: the energy from sunlight (photons) was used to makesugars and stored by algae. This was the significant first step. Stalks formedslowly, slowly over many, many millions of years, grew from nubbin to matchstickto become ferns that proliferated and grew to enormous size in the Carboniferousperiod, which began about 350 million years ago. This was a time when giantforests of huge tree ferns covered the Earth. These tree ferns removedprodigious amounts of carbons from poisonous gases, storing it in their leavesand stalks. After millions of more years went by and layer upon layer fell intodecay, pressure and time transformed these vast fern forests into coal. Removingcarbon dioxide and releasing oxygen, these giant tree fern forests made the airbreathable. They also made it possible for more sunlight to reach the surface ofthe Earth through the clearer air.

The fern forests became the womb and the nursery of the first trees. As JohnStewart Collis, another English author phrased it, "In these glades was maturedthe idea of not falling down" (Collis, The Triumph of the Tree, 1954, p. 10).The ferns rose and fell, over and over again, producing stalks and branches thatgrew eventually to be the size of trees. In their midst, some 290 million yearsago, a more energy-efficient form of plant life, which had woody trunks andbranches, appeared. Wood tree trunks are structurally stronger than stalks, andthey have roots that anchor the tree in the ground. Tree trunks provide a two-wayconduit of water and nutrients from roots to leaves, and from leaves to thewhole tree. As a tree grows above the ground, its root structure grows also. Ingood, deep soil, some species of trees can have as large a circulatory rootsystem below ground as the visible branches and leaves.

The root system of trees continues to have a key role in transforming rock intosoil. This process began when the planet was lifeless rock, with a thin layer ofalgae, mold, lichen, and fungi. Soil is made from rock that disintegrates intodust and releases minerals, plus decaying organic matter, oxygen, and water.Trees draw from and contribute to making more soil. Their roots break up andaerate rock and hard clay. Dropping leaves provide organic matter. Their leavesrelease water vapor and oxygen into the atmosphere, drip water into the groundbelow, and provide shade that prevents evaporation. Trees create the conditionsfor ground-covering plants to grow under them. Tree roots hold the soil down,preventing runoff after rain and keeping strong winds from carrying it away.Trees create watersheds, the source of water to feed streams and rivers. Whenhuge areas of forests are clear-cut for timber or burned down to raise cattle,the ecological systems supported by trees—from roots to leafy canopies—are alsodestroyed, affecting all forms of life that once thrived there, as well as thequality of the air, soil, and water in the immediate area and far downstream.

Every large tree has an ecosystem of its own, a sphere of influence in itsimmediate environment. I began to think about this after my Monterey pine wascut down. There were observable consequences, beyond its absence. The residentsquirrel got displaced. More direct sun instead of partial sun and shade changedwhat would thrive in the half dozen terra-cotta planters that I planted withannuals. Direct sun in spring and fall, morning fog in the summer had been idealfor the bright, colorful impatiens that I had planted for years, exchanging themfor cyclamen as autumn approached. The tree had also sheltered many plants fromthe wind, which I next discovered. For the first time, in the absence of shade,I planted sun-loving petunias, which initially grew very fast and had to bewatered often. Then came the summer fog, and the petunias became immediatelypathetic, the blooms overnight becoming limp and mildewed. A slow-growing vinewent into overdrive, sending out waving tendrils by the foot that now needed tobe cut back often, before they could cover or strangle nearby rhododendrons. Nowunprotected from the direct sun, rhododendron and camellia leaves becamesunburnt in unusually hot weather. The side of the hill on which this particulartree had thrived for forty or so years has very poor soil; the dirt is mainlygravel and sand and very hard. Yet the ground cover and established shade-lovingflowering plants and a maple tree did well, with virtually no watering. The pineneedles had been a water-dripping system. Not just for itself, but also for itstree neighbors. So much so that when I went out to get the morning newspapers,the walk beneath its branches often looked as if it had rained during the night.The pine tree had been the center of an ecologically sustainable little island,which now requires watering.

Invisible to me was the ecosystem underground. Trees are part of a mutuallybeneficial community in all directions. Trees are a habitat for the plants,insects, birds, and animals in their vicinity, but an even closer bond is formedwith the fungi and bacteria that are intimately connected to the metabolism ofthe tree. They eat the sugars that the tree makes and bind the hydrogen that thetree needs. Bill Mollison, the originator of permaculture, a sustainableecological design inspired by observing rain forests, described how bacterialcolonies on the leaves of trees are carried aloft by the wind high into theclouds, where ice crystals form around them, and as they get heavier and fall,they seed the clouds and cause rain to fall on the trees. The rain that fallsthrough the tree canopy is now rain-bath water, a rich nutrient soup that washesoff the minerals that were left on the leaves by evaporation, providing thesenutrients for the ground cover, the little plants under the trees, and soakinginto the soil, from which it will be pulled through the roots, the ends of whichare covered by bacteria that are a two-way selective filter, and up the xylem ofthe tree to the leaves. Forests of trees keep the rain going, which is why allhuge forests, whether in the tropics or on the northernmost edge of thecontinents, are rain forests.

Two Kinds of Trees

My tree was a conifer (conifer means "cone-bearing"), in the tree family lineagethat began 290 million years ago. Conifers are familiar trees, known to us asfirs, spruces, pines, cedars, redwoods, cypress, podocarps, yews, and junipers.They originated in and continue to survive in poor soil, with extremes ofweather from tropical to desert, to almost arctic. Among the conifers inCalifornia are coast redwoods, the tallest trees in the world, and thebristlecone pines, which are the oldest. They comprise the vast boreal forestsin Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia, Russia, and Siberia. They thrive in places whereconditions are difficult, including in areas where fires are common. They aresurvivors and pioneers—trees that move into devastated areas and grow whereother trees do not.

The conifers are one of the two large tree categories that make up 99 percent ofall trees: trees without flowers (conifers) and trees with flowers (theangiosperms). Angiosperms differ from conifers in their sexuality. The femaleovule is completely enclosed within the ovary, and the male gamete must becarried to it via pollen tubes. Uniquely, angiosperms practice doublefertilization. This is a very brief summation; left out are definitions andexplanations, the various means of union and procreation, and how this contrastswith conifers. Suffice it to note that the obstetrics and gynecology of the twocategories differ. The angiosperms are a huge universe of flowering plants(300,000 species), among which there are trees. The surmise is that floweringtrees with woody trunks evolved from flowering plants, with missing links. Alsonot known are when, where, and how angiosperms originated.

Broadleaf trees are angiosperms: they include acacia, maple, elder, baobab,alder, aralia, birch, hickory, hawthorn, laurel, eucalyptus (gum), linden,olive, beech, banyan, fig, sycamore, ash, locust, mulberry, plane, coffee,holly, poplar, aspen, oak, willow, pepper, elm, and many others. Fruit trees,nut-bearing trees, and flowering trees are also angiosperms. There are aboutfifty times more species of flowering trees than of conifers. They usually growwhere the soil is good or adequate, in temperate zones where the weather haspredictable seasons, or in the vast tropical forests of the Amazon, centralAfrica, or Indonesia.

Tropical Rain Forests and Boreal Rain Forests

Both tropical rain forests and boreal forests are being destroyed at an alarmingrate by humans for economic reasons. In an article in National Geographic(Wallace, "Last of the Amazon," January 2007), Scott Wallace began with thesentence: "In the time it takes to read this article, an area of Brazil's rainforest larger than 200 football fields will have been destroyed." Industrial-scalesoybean producers are joining loggers and cattle ranchers in the landgrab. Roads are cut through the forest to make valuable hardwood trees moreaccessible and transportable. In the Amazon, there are more than 105,000 milesof these roads, almost all made illegally, which then are used by squatters,farmers, and ranchers who clear the land by burning off the underbrush and treesthat remain.

As indigenous people intuitively grasp, the benefits the Amazon provides are ofincalculable worth: water cycling (the forest produces not only half its ownrainfall, but also much of the rain south of the Amazon and east of the Andes),carbon sequestering (by holding and absorbing carbon dioxide, the forestmitigates global warming and cleanses the atmosphere), and maintenance of anunmatched panoply of life. But there haven't been profits in keeping the forest.Money is made by logging and by cutting it down for grazing and farming, not byleaving it standing.

Twenty percent or more of the Amazon rain forest has been cut down so far. Whenanother 20 percent is destroyed, scientific expectations are that the forest'secology will unravel. This would reduce the amount of rainfall that the forestproduces through the moisture the trees release into the atmosphere. To this,add global warming: remaining trees then dry out, leading to droughts andsusceptibility to fire. Amazon forest fires burned unchecked for months duringthe record drought of 2005–2006, followed in 2007 by the worst rain-forest firein history. Smoke releases tons of carbon dioxide and other pollutants into theair, directly raising the ambient temperature, and further contributing toglobal warming by the production of more greenhouse gases. The deforestationstory is the same in Indonesia, the country with the largest tropical forest inSoutheast Asia, which replenishes fresh water and has a key role in weather andclimate.

Whether my concern is about one tree or forests, one person or humanity, I learnwhat I need in order to grasp a situation that affects a species or a class ofpeople (children, women, race, or religion) by paying attention to an individualthat is representative. I want to see the forest and the trees, a metaphor thatbecame literal. I learned from my Monterey pine that pine needles condense foginto lots of dripping water. Next I learned from others that trees also sendwater upward from groundwater; they transpire it from roots through leaves.Colin Tudge wrote that a big tree can transpire 500 liters (528 quarts) in aday.

In Tree: A Life Story, David Suzuki and Wayne Grady explained how one tree addsto the big picture: "A single tree in the Amazon rain forest lifts hundreds ofliters of water every day. The rain forest behaves like a green ocean,transpiring water that rains upward, as though gravity were reversed. Thesetranspired mists then flow across the continent in great rivers of vapor. Thewater condenses, falls as rain, and is pulled back up again through the trees.It rises and falls on its westward migration an average of six times beforefinally hitting the physical barrier of the Andes mountains and flowing backacross the continent as the mightiest river of Earth" (2004, p. 68). Thisparticular description captured my imagination and thereby my understanding.

The North American continent has its own vast, endangered boreal forests ofconifers. In the waiting room of my optometrist, I picked up a six-month-oldcopy of Audubon just after I decided to write Like a Tree. In it, journalist T.Edward Pickens described Canada's boreal forest as "an emerald halo ofwoodlands, wetlands, and rivers that mantles North America. This is the greatestwilderness on the continent, a 1.3 billion-acre forest stretching fromNewfoundland all the way to the Yukon. The Canadian boreal holds a quarter ofthe world's forests and most of its unfrozen freshwater, and sequesters 1.3trillion metric tons of carbon" ("Paper Chase," January–February 2009). Morethan three hundred species of birds breed there, and as many as five billionindividual birds fly south from the boreal each autumn. These trees are beingclear-cut to make paper, for books, catalogs, paper towels, and toilet paper.There are clear-cut areas measured in square miles. In an issue of NationalGeographic (June 2002), I learned that boreal forests have more wetlands thananywhere else in the world. Those in Russia and Canada each contain an estimatedone million to two million lakes and ponds.