Talking Trees?

I once read in a biographical essay of J.R.R Tolkien that he was a lover of trees. He would often go on walks and stare at the them for long periods of time, sometimes even talking to them. It's no wonder, then, how the great, talking tree giants, known as Ents, ended up in his stories.

While talking to trees may sound strange to some, the idea of trees communicating is not fictional to some of the scientists who study them. One of these scientist, Dr. Suzanne Simard, discovered that trees can use fungi underground to communicate with one another. According to her, they can even send warning signals to each other and give each other nutrients as needed. Other trees can send warning signals via gasses and pheromones they produce into the air when danger approaches.

This quiet form of communication and apparent generosity between trees is not just an unexplored theory. There have been several instances studied in the wild of different species sending signals to one another such as on the African savannah when giraffes fed on umbrella thorn acacia trees. When the the leaves were chewed on, a tree would produce toxins, even causing the leaves to taste differently. It doesn't stop there, though. The tree then released ethylene gas to warn nearby trees so they could also produce the toxins in their leaves to avoid being fed upon.

So how does the tree know when to warn other trees? A study from Leipzig University in Germany suggests that they can actually "smell" and "taste" different kinds of animal saliva through their leaves, and somehow they know the difference. It has been observed that when caterpillars are feeding on the leaves of some pine trees, a pheromone is released by the tree that attracts parasitic wasps to come take care of their pest problem. They are also intelligent enough to send needed nutrients to heal "wounds" of broken branches. For those who grew up in the 1990's like myself, scenes of trees as victims from Ferngully may come to mind. Other's may be reminded of a certain 2008 M. Night Shyalaman movie staring Mark Wahlberg, in which plants release a substance that causes people to commit suicide. Thankfully, the trees aren't so malicious as that latter example. Instead they are simply protective of themselves and each other.

So what if trees can communicate with each other? Besides being a fun fact, why should we care? Trees use their underground connections for more than communication. "Mother trees," a term that Dr. Simard gives to the older trees in a given location, provide sugars and other other important nutrients to much younger trees through the same fungal links. She believes that they can actually recognize trees they are related to through this network, and have deeper roots, allowing them to pull up more water and nutrients to send to the younger trees. Even more, she says that they can detect signals of distress from young trees in need and adjust to giving what they need. When the bigger, "mother" trees are removed from a forest, the younger trees miss out on the nurturing effects mentioned above.

While all of this sounds crazy or fascinating, depending on the kind of person you may be, not everyone believes these connections to be intentional. Like other living organisms, they have evolved to live through changing environments and harsh conditions. Calling older trees, "mother" trees sounds like trees intentionally raise their young as humans and some animals do. While the trees support one another, it may simply be how they have adapted to survive instead of evidence of a sentimental relationship. Whatever the case, the fact that these trees can communicate both underground and above allows us to see them differently.

J.R.R Tolkien found time to see the trees differently than his peers and even created memorable characters by giving them voices of their own. Perhaps he was ahead of his time in recognizing something more intelligent in trees, even if he was found odd for his behavior concerning them. Next time you are out for a walk, breath in the air that trees help clean, and maybe stop for a quick chat. Just don't expect one to start talking back unless you are in Middle Earth.

For more information on this subject, I suggest the following where I did my own research:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering-trees-180968084/