Talking to Trees

Last summer a local woodlot owner invited me on a walk. When I got there, he introduced me to a friend of his, a tall amiable fellow we'll call Hank. After some small talk, the three of us set off along one of several trails. On the way, Hank asked me, out of the blue, whether I talked to trees.

I thought for a moment and said, no, with me it was more like listening. Like hearing the faint swish of pine needles against my jacket, the patter of rain on summer leaves, the rustle of autumn leaves falling. In other words, trying to pick up the arboreal gossip. “Do you?” I said.

“Oh yes,” he replied. He then explained how if, on a woods walk he spots a tree with human-like features, say with a torso-like growth or arm-like branches or even a face, he'll chain-saw the likeness to make it even more human-like. Or combine two lifelike pieces. He sounded so keen I could easily picture him talking to his subjects as he worked his magic.

Too bad the trees couldn't respond in real time. For trees can communicate, at least with other trees. German forester Peter Wohlleben in his Hidden Life of Trees (2015) says they send airborne chemical signals to warn their kind of, say, leafmunching caterpillars or an approaching forest fire. They also share nutrients with other species via root-andfungus networks.

Wouldn't it be nice to listen in! Unfortunately, the transfer of information is extremely slow. One might have to wait for weeks to get an answer, and weeks more to decipher it.

Still, should a scientist somewhere develop a tree Zoom link, I'd like to try. I'd start with a large white ash growing in a downtown Truro front yard. We “met” a few years ago. What caught my eye was a pair of goggle eyes someone had pinned above a nose-like bump on its lower trunk.

Once I'd introduced myself, what would I say? Perhaps a warning? Two summers ago, on our property in Clifton, a large ash I planted in the late 1970s started to turn brown.

There being no signs of tunneling by the newly identified Emerald Ash Borer, nor any obvious root disturbance, I was baffled. Perhaps global warming? Next year it died. It was when my second ash tree wilted that I learned about the lethal Asian ash blight then threatening 90 percent of European and New England ash trees.

Warnings aside, Nova Scotia still has plenty of healthy ash. Last week, hiking the upper Moose River gorge in the Cobequid hills with a buddy, I saw lots, some a halfmetre in diameter. As to my Truro ash friend. I haven't seen it lately. If it's still alive (and no one's watching), I'll have a word with it.

Besides warning it, I want to apologize for other Maritime trees which human carelessness have decimated since 1900. Like American beech, once our commonest hardwood, stricken by an insect-borne bark canker. Like white elm, that superb shade tree, victim of so-called Dutch elm disease (Dutch scientists merely ID'D the fungus) which likely entered NS on bark beetles in liveswan (bark left on) coffin crates from QC. Like our latest threat, the aphid-like hemlock adelgid recently discovered in Halifax County. It threatens that species everywhere, including those in the town's treasured Victoria Park.

Unfortunately, humans aren't the only species to suffer from pandemics - and often we're to blame.