Like Trees, We Care For Each Other

“But the most astonishing thing about trees is how social they are. The trees in a forest care for each other, sometimes even going so far as to nourish the stump of a felled tree for centuries after it was cut down by feeding it sugars and other nutrients, and so keeping it alive. Only some stumps are thus nourished. Perhaps they are the parents of the trees that make up the forest of today. A tree’s most important means of staying connected to other trees is a “wood wide web” of soil fungi that connects vegetation in an intimate network that allows the sharing of an enormous amount of information and goods. Scientific research aimed at understanding the astonishing abilities of this partnership between fungi and plant has only just begun. The reason trees share food and communicate is that they need each other. It takes a forest to create a microclimate suitable for tree growth and sustenance. So it’s not surprising that isolated trees have far shorter lives than those living connected together in forests. Perhaps the saddest plants of all are those we have enslaved in our agricultural systems. They seem to have lost the ability to communicate, and, as Wohlleben says, are thus rendered deaf and dumb. “Perhaps farmers can learn from the forests and breed a little more wildness back into their grain and potatoes,” he advocates, “so that they’ll be more talkative in the future.” Opening” 

― Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from A Secret World

“ The reason trees share food and communicate is that they need each other.”

I have been pondering the profound lessons we might learn from nature. I have been revisiting The Hidden Life of Trees in order to glean from nature some lessons about human beings. I am struck by the words “share” and “communicate” and “need”. 

It strikes me that the beloved community for which we yearn is based on these words rearranged: shared communication is needed. So often it seems we throw words out there with little sensitivity and little purpose. Trees seem to be able to communicate, albeit through smell, with the purpose ordained them: to sustain a community. There is a balance between listening and speaking, receiving and giving.

In this world so fraught with anxiety and despair we may have lost sight of our shared purpose. We need each other. And this need implies a caring for all creation. 

Enslavement and isolation for trees is not healthy. Why would it be for human beings?