{"id":1647,"date":"2016-10-23T15:34:12","date_gmt":"2016-10-23T15:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kriyayoga-mahavatarbabaji.com\/a-vida-screta-das-arvores\/"},"modified":"2021-09-25T22:13:23","modified_gmt":"2021-09-25T22:13:23","slug":"a-vida-screta-das-arvores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kriyayoga-mahavatarbabaji.com\/en\/a-vida-screta-das-arvores\/","title":{"rendered":"The Secret Life of The Trees"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trees have friends, feel loneliness, scream with pain and communicate underground via the \u201cwoodwide web\u201d. Some act as parents and good neighbours. Others do more than just throw shade \u2013 they\u2019re brutal bullies to rival species. The young ones take risks with their drinking and leaf-dropping then remember the hard lessons from their mistakes. It\u2019s a hard-knock life.<\/p>\r\n

A book called “The Hidden Life of Trees” is not an obvious bestseller but it\u2019s easy to see the popular appeal of German forester Peter Wohlleben\u2019s claims \u2013 they are so anthropomorphic. Certainly, a walk in the park feels different when you imagine the network of roots crackling with sappy chat beneath your feet. We don\u2019t know the half of what\u2019s going on underground and beneath the bark, he says:<\/p>\r\n

\u201cWe have been looking at nature for the last 100 years like [it is] a machine.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

There\u2019s a touchy-feely warmth to the book \u2013 an \u201couch!\u201d when he describes trees having branches hacked, roots cut or being gnawed by insects \u2013 and he talks about \u201cbrainlike things\u201d going on in trees that enable them to learn over their long lifetimes. He points to scientific research \u2013 by Aachen University, the University of British Columbia and the Max Planck Society \u2013 that he claims underpins all his vivid descriptions, but he writes as a conservationist and admits that much is still unknown.<\/p>\r\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very hard to find out what trees are communicating when they feel well\u201d, he says.<\/p>\r\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Wohlleben \u2013 it translates as \u201cLivewell\u201d \u2013 has developed his thinking over the past decade while watching the powerful but self-interested survival system of the ancient beech forest he manages in the Eifel mountains of western Germany.<\/p>\r\n

\u201cThe thing that surprised me most is how social trees are. I stumbled over an old stump one day and saw that it was still living although it was 400 or 500 years old, without any green leaf. Every living being needs nutrition. The only explanation was that it was supported by the neighbour trees via the roots with a sugar solution. As a forester, I learned that trees are competitors that struggle against each other, for light, for space, and there I saw that it\u2019s just vice versa. Trees are very interested in keeping every member of this community alive<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The key to it, he says, is the so-called woodwide web \u2013 trees message their distress in electrical signals via their roots and across fungi networks (\u201clike our nerve system\u201d) to others nearby when they are under attack. By the same means, they feed stricken trees, nurture some saplings (their \u201cmost beloved child\u201d) and restrict others to keep the community strong.<\/p>\r\n

\u201cTrees may recognise with their roots who are their friends, who are their families, where their kids are. Then they may also recognise trees that are not so welcome. There are some stumps in these old beech reservations that are alive, and there are some that are rotten, which obviously have had no contact with the roots of supporting neighbours. So perhaps they are like hermits.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

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It sounds like living in a small village \u2013 as he does, in H\u00fcmmel, near the Belgian border.<\/p>\r\n

He writes about the unforgiving woodland etiquette \u2013 no one likes a showoff who crowds everyone out and hogs the resources. When trees break the rules, you end up with a \u201cdrunken forest\u201d. He describes \u201cupright members of ancient forests \u2026 This is what a mature, well-behaved deciduous tree looks like. It has a ramrod-straight trunk with a regular, orderly arrangement of wood fibres.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

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In Wohlleben\u2019s analysis, it\u2019s almost as if trees have feelings and character.<\/p>\r\n

\u201cWe think about plants being robotic, following a genetic code. Plants and trees always have a choice about what to do. Trees are able to decide, have memories and even different characters. There are perhaps nicer guys and bad guys.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

So which are good, bad and sad? Beeches and oaks form forests that last for thousands of years because they act like families, he says. Trees are tribal (\u201cThey are genetically as far away from each other as you and a goldfish\u201d) and ruthlessly protect their own kind:<\/p>\r\n

\u201cBeeches harass new species such as oak to such an extent that they weaken.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Douglas fir and spruce also bond within their species.<\/p>\r\n

Willows are loners.<\/p>\r\n

\u201cThe seeds fly far away from other trees, many kilometres. The trees grow fast and don\u2019t live very long. They are like Usain Bolt \u2013 always the first, then they can\u2019t breathe any more after 100 years and then they are gone.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Poplars aren\u2019t social either and \u201ca birch will wipe other trees away so it has more space for its crown. That doesn\u2019t sound very nice but I think birch has no other choice because that\u2019s what it\u2019s grown like because of its genes.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 City trees are like street kids \u2013 isolated and struggling against the odds without strong roots<\/p>\r\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He talks about the natural world admiringly, wondrously even, but unsentimentally.<\/p>\r\n

\u201cThe question for me is not should we use any living being but just how to deal with them.\u201d He wants us to cut down our wood consumption and enjoy trees more \u2013 he describes them as \u201cplant elephants\u201d. Have we lost our connection with the natural world? \u201cNo, I don\u2019t think so. Perhaps we have a little distance because scientists over the last 200 years have taught us that nature works without soul.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

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We put following an interview and other video about it:<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

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