Behold the beauty

Jo Bornemissza

THE world is waking up to the power of trees. Their spiritual value and not just the value they hold in commercial terms is being dubbed “treeconomics,” while there is even a suggestion that trees might be social beings.

In his groundbreaking book, The Hidden Life of Trees, German forester Peter Wohlleben describes trees as being like human families: tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, support them as they grow, share nutrients with those in the forest that are sick and struggling, and even warn each other of impending dangers.

The idea of treeconomics coming from Britain makes the case for urban trees, suggesting that street trees can save polluted, overcrowded and stressful cities.

Not only do they cut pollution, they also increase land value and even make people feel younger.

Walking the streets of Hobart and its environs, one can’t help feel that the city is becoming increasingly out of step with this emerging worldwide view of urban and suburban trees, to say nothing of forests in wilder areas.

During the past year or so, in Hobart, a number of fine, mature and significant trees have been tragically felled. Two stately eucalyptus globulus (blue gums) in York St, were ground into oblivion, bringing ongoing heartache to nearby residents. Another eucalyptus globulus, beloved by many, on the corner of Davey and Molle streets, estimated to have been approximately 150 years old, was also felled, ostensibly, because it was “unsafe”.

On Mt Nelson, four unique, magnificent, century-old eucalyptus pulchella, habitat for pardalotes, and two 30m high poplars have been annihilated.

A rare, unprotected and ancient bunya bunya pine, araucaria bidwillii, at New Town, was tragically and shamefully “murdered” (as Wohlleben and David George Haskell, author of The Songs of Trees, would call this act) because its football-sized cones fell onto cars.

This tree is the last surviving species of the section bunya of the genus araucaria and was diverse and widespread during the Mesozoic era, with some species having cone morphology similar to araucaria bidwillii, which appeared in the Jurassic (about 150 million years ago).

Large bunya festivals, probably Australia’s largest indigenous events, which included hundreds of Aboriginal people who feasted on the ripe cones, occurred in South-East Queensland, where the tree was abundant.

In some areas, because of the sacred status of the bunya, the tree was never to be cut.

American novelist John Steinbeck, responding to California’s giant redwood trees, which can soar more than a hundred metres towards the sky, wrote: “They leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always … from them comes silence and awe”.

In 2016, the world lost Bill Mollison, the grandfather of permaculture.

He said: ‘If we could only understand what a tree does for us, how beneficial it is to life on Earth, we will (as many tribes have done) revere all trees as sisters and brothers. Without trees, we cannot inhabit the Earth. Without trees, we rapidly create deserts and drought, and the evidence for this is before our eyes. Without trees, the atmosphere will alter its composition, and life support systems will fail.”

Wohlleben manages the forest at Hummel, Germany, where machines have been banned for 20 years.

Instead, occasional harvesting is done with care, by foresters using horses. His daily observations are supported by scientific research programs at Aachen University, which have found that trees feel pain and that they care for one another. Together and intact, as in a forest, many trees create an ecosystem that moderates heat and cold, stores a great deal of water and generates a great deal of humidity, as a result of which, trees can live to be very old.

Haskell also, using ultrasonic sensors, has recorded the sounds of leaf stomata opening and closing, the cellular movement of water for photosynthesis and the “high pitched” sounds of cells breaking when trees dry. The nocturnal process of osmosis — the drawing upwards in defiance of gravity, by the electrical charges on the roots’ cellulose molecules and in the cell walls of fungi is also recorded and observed on computer graphs.

Both authors know that trees possess their own hormonal, electrical and chemical networks, which pervade branches and roots. They are seen as masters of