Spruce and The Hidden Life of Trees

[madhat]

Sounds like enjoyable book.
Thanks for sharing.

madhat.

[devellis]

Originally Posted by Alan Carruth

AlThumbsBruce wrote:
"Wohlleben appears to have used anthropomorphic language to describe well-known science. "

Exactly, which is both a strength and a weakness of the book. I just finished reading it a week or so ago, and am a bit ambivalent.

Certainly his language is useful in helping to convey a lot of the more recent science in a way that is immediately available to folks with a less technical bent. As we learn more we find that a forest is not simply a collection of more or less random plants that all happen to grow well in the particular climate. In fact it is much more 'networked', at a far finer scale, than we would have imagined. Trees produce chemicals that they do not need themselves, feeding them instead to fungi and other things, which, in turn, help to supply the tree with things it does need. He does a very good job of getting this across.

The problem comes in with the language of 'agency'. It's known that small children see objects as 'agents'; a ball rolls off the shelf and hit somebody on the head because it 'wanted' to. It takes a while for us to outgrow this mind set, at least to some extent. It is, to a degree, baked into the language, and that's part of the issue.

As an example: green wood that is bent tends to fail first on the compression side. In response, trees normally add new wood in a 'pre-stressed' condition, so that it is under tension relative to the older wood further in the trunk. It's easy, when talking about this, to say that the tree 'wants' to have the new wood in tension, so as to reduce failures under bending loads, but, of course, there is nothing volitional about it. At some point in the distant past a woody plant mutated in such a way as to do this, and had a survival advantage, in that it could grow taller than other similar plants without breaking in the wind. The modification was passed on and became a basis for the whole lineage of trees as we know them. We almost never talk about it in that way, simply because it takes so long, and anyway, 'everybody' knows what we mean when we say that the tree 'wants' to have the outer layers of wood in relative tension, and 'employs' a certain mechanism to do it. Except, of course, that there are poeple who don't understand it that way, and will take it the wrong way if they are not careful.

The trap comes when we forget that this is just a convenient shorthand. It is particularly pernicious when it feeds into our normal predilictions toward 'agency' thinking and anthropomorphization. A tree certainly reacts when we break off a branch, but it doesn't say 'ouch!'. Some of the things the tree does are very complex, and it's easy to say that, since we do those sorts of things as the result of thinking, the tree must be thinking as well. I'm not saying we need to be totally Skinnerian here, rejecting the whole concept of 'mind', bit it is awfully hard to see how a tree could 'think' without anything to think with.

This all becomes fraught, and I'm not trying to push this thread into a braod philosophical discourse, which is well beyond my competence or interest anyway. Wohlleben has written an engaging and useful book, which I would recommend to anybody on this list. Science is changing fast, and fields like forestry need to change equally fast if we are to correct the sins of the past. But we need to be careful to avoid over romanticizing things too.

Alan:

Thanks for this. It is easy for people to imbue non-human entities with human attributes and it can make for some engaging descriptions and even facilitate understanding. But it's important, I think, to remember that it's metaphorical, not literal, to ascribe high-level human capacities to plants.

It's kind of like looking at someone sunbathing and going on about how they're nourishing themselves by taking in the sun's energy and converting water in their cells and CO2 in the air into sugars. No, that's what plants do, not what mammals do. Sure, there's some other stuff going on, like the production of Vitamin D, that is nourishing in a sense. But it isn't photosynthesis and we don't use sun the way plants do in a literal sense.

Likewise, things like learning in the true sense aren't what plants do. Now, of course, something like learning isn't easy to define. Clearly, environmental exposures of various types can change what happens to an organism when it it encounters the same situation in the future. But most of us define "learning" as a more complex process. You can "train" a bacterium to avoid brighter light if it's paired with a change in pH that the bacterium doesn't "like," but that's a far cry from the sort of learning that goes on in human heads (or mouse heads) in terms of complexity, generalizability, or flexibility. Only by analogy is it fair to call what the bacterium does "problem solving," for example. It hasn't identified a problem, worked out a solution, and implemented it. It's merely reacting as it's programmed to do. Yes, there are some similarities and basic biochemical processes undoubtedly play a part in both types of changes, reactive and well-reasoned. But the differences are still vast and using the term "learning" seems to confuse that fact and to encourage a lack of differentiation that I think is very useful to an understanding of what's going on.

Ecosystems are wonderful, complex, interrelated entities for sure. (They don't call them "systems" for nothing.) And I'm not trying to suggest otherwise. I live in the woods and the trees that I can see from my window as I type this are a source of amazement, joy, and wonder to me. And human thought, behavior, and emotion -- equally sources of wonder -- clearly have their origins in some basic, lower-level processes.

But something a lot of scientific discourse has been emphasizing of late is the idea that phenomena are best described using the language and concepts that are most applicable to the system and scale being described. Using the language of quantum mechanics to describe your reaction to the birthday gift your uncle gave you or cultural concepts to describe the failure of cyanobacteria to form large aggregate masses may produce some vivid prose and may be kind of fun. It may even provide new ways of thinking about something. But it's not really the best way to understand the actual nature of the phenomena. Such jumps across levels of scale or domains of science are essentially metaphors. And metaphors can be very useful for many things. But they're not literal descriptions, by definition.

We humans always seem to think we're the only truly sentient beings because we can learn calculus. But we often fail to understand the different intelligences shared by everything around us that contains DNA.

I noticed something about six months ago. I commissioned several trees to be planted on my property. Pepper trees. Two of them are sort of off on their own and four are grouped tightly together. The isolated trees have barely grown. The group of trees are now significantly advanced in growth and doing what I had in mind. A walnut tree I had planted all by its lonesome has made all of one nut in its life so far and has grown maybe three inches. Maybe I need to plant some friends nearby, because where I used to live I had a walnut tree that was next to other fruit trees and it got to near mature size in something like 3 years. Trees seem to be like people. Communal.

[devellis]

Originally Posted by Frozen Rat

We humans always seem to think we're the only truly sentient beings because we can learn calculus. But we often fail to understand the different intelligences shared by everything around us that contains DNA.

I noticed something about six months ago. I commissioned several trees to be planted on my property. Pepper trees. Two of them are sort of off on their own and four are grouped tightly together. The isolated trees have barely grown. The group of trees are now significantly advanced in growth and doing what I had in mind. A walnut tree I had planted all by its lonesome has made all of one nut in its life so far and has grown maybe three inches. Maybe I need to plant some friends nearby, because where I used to live I had a walnut tree that was next to other fruit trees and it got to near mature size in something like 3 years. Trees seem to be like people. Communal.

And were all other factors other than "companionship" identical? Are there botanical explanations for why trees might grow differently when in proximity to one another that don't require the attribution of human qualities to those trees? Does any of this provide any evidence of sentience? Or are sentience and community factors that we are aware of in humans and that we may project onto trees essentially a metaphor rather than an actual fact? I guess we can each decide for ourselves what we choose to believe and to what extent we rely on factual evidence to support those beliefs.

[MChild62]

Alan, Bob

I discovered the Wohlleben book as it was mentioned in an interview with Frans de Waal, a noted primatologist and publicizer of science who also believes that anthropomorphic language may be a more accurate way to describe animal behavior. (De Waal's comment, which I remember, was that the book had enough science about plant life to make vegetarians nervous.)

While Wohlleben also uses anthropomorphic descriptions, he is also careful to explain when he is doing so. Being an honest science communicator, he also acknowledges when there is disagreement among scientists about the principles he discusses.

For example, the chapter, "Tree school," argues that trees really do learn from their environment. "If trees are capable of learning (and you can see they are just by observing them) then the question becomes: Where do they store what they have learned and how do they access this information? After all, they don't have brains to function as databases and manage processes. It's the same for all plants, and that's why some scientists are skeptical and why many of them banish to the realm of fantasy the idea of plants' ability to learn." He then sets out an argument, with evidence, as to why actual learning is possible. You can say, I don't buy it... but now you're getting into a debate that would be enjoyed by graduate students or in a faculty lounge, ie, it's gone beyond the reach (and interest) of most people who would buy and benefit from his book.

There is a meaningful distinction to be made between science texts for scientists and books that explain science to the public. We are constrained by how we are able to absorb and relate to new knowledge. It's not easy to explain new developments from specialized fields to people who lack a background in them. (It's something that I struggle with myself when publishing for a broad and non-specialist audience.) That's why so few science authors can achieve what Wohlleben has, ie, resonate with the general public, sell a lot of books, and remain intellectually honest with the science. Heck, if more science was communicated this effectively, maybe the public would be more appreciative of it and less hostile.

So, anyone might ask, what does this have to do with guitars? For one thing, they are less mysterious for the unitiated, and you can use anthropomorphic language on them and no one will bat an eye.

Now I've got to go attend to my 512ce. She's been looking lonely while I was typing this.

Originally Posted by devellis

And were all other factors other than "companionship" identical? Are there botanical explanations for why trees might grow differently when in proximity to one another that don't require the attribution of human qualities to those trees?

I'd say the factors were about as close as one can get in a "wild" situation. I'm not married to any ideology here because I'm a firm believer in "correlation does not equal causation," but I'm also open-minded and flexible in my thinking and willing to entertain possibilities that others tend to dismiss too readily. I've seen a few things in my life that make me aware that all is not as it appears. I'm willing to entertain the thought that trees and plants may have forms of sentience that we are overlooking.

On a related note, there was a debate about this in one an upper division anthropological class that I was part of at university, where we tried to pin down if survival was inherent to DNA or inherent to the being created by DNA. I can't recall who said it, but a well-known scientist, who I think is still living (and not part of the debate), said that we only exist to help DNA evolve and survive. I said that went a bit too far and argued that it's not the puzzle pieces that create the image, but the whole created by them, that perpetuates the image (life), the DNA is just along for the ride, yet one cannot deny its absolutely critical role. Or rather that bricks may be part of a building, but they do not serve any purpose singularly; rather only as a group, and as a group they become something more complex and that more complex entity is what "gets things done." Very good arguments against that line of reasoning were brought up and we finally determined that this particular question is not an easy one to answer.

[devellis]

Originally Posted by Frozen Rat

On a related note, there was a debate about this in one an upper division anthropological class that I was part of at university, where we tried to pin down if survival was inherent to DNA or inherent to the being created by DNA. I can't recall who said it, but a well-known scientist, who I think is still living (and not part of the debate), said that we only exist to help DNA evolve and survive. I said that went a bit too far and argued that it's not the puzzle pieces that create the image, but the whole created by them, that perpetuates the image (life), the DNA is just along for the ride, yet one cannot deny its absolutely critical role. Or rather that bricks may be part of a building, but they do not serve any purpose singularly; rather only as a group, and as a group they become something more complex and that more complex entity is what "gets things done." Very good arguments against that line of reasoning were brought up and we finally determined that this particular question is not an easy one to answer.

Sounds like Richard Dawkins. He would certainly argue that it's all about the DNA and the rest of us is merely along for the ride. From an evolutionary perspective, his arguments do make sense, although they're fairly jarring to contemplate. Countless species, let alone individuals, have come and gone while much of their DNA persists in the species and individuals that have survived. I think that's what Dawkins means.


Popular science writing does inevitably involve taking license with some of the details. There's an up-side and a down-side to that. I haven't read the book in question but it sounds like it does a fair job of dealing with that issue. I suspect part of the disagreement centers around how someone defines "learning." My understanding of the term is clearly narrower than the book author's. And although my understanding is based on formal study and teaching learning theory, I'll concede that others may have different definitions. I still consider whatever trees do to be outside the bounds of my working definition, but I'm fine with someone else using a broader definition, as long as they explain that that's what they're doing. And it seems that Wohlleben did that, to his credit.

[redir]

It sounds like a good read. As a geologist myself I have the mind of science and always am skeptical about anything that is even remotely 'spiritual' but none the less there certainly is a 'feeling' you get when you spend some time in the great old growth forests in the North West US. They are truly wonderful places that everyone should go visit. It can't be explained in words really except perhaps breath taking.

All things in life are part of 'the system'. System dynamics has always been the most interesting thing to me.

[Paultergeist]

This certainly sounds like a very charming way to look at the forests and trees, but from what I can tell, this book does not seem to be an evidence-based exploration of the subject. Perhaps this is more "art" than "science?"

[Glennwillow]

Sounds like an interesting book! I will check it out!

- Glenn

[fazool]

A lot of people seem to view this book as a metaphysical treatise on consciousness.

I am currently reading it and think it is exactly the opposite of that. That viewpoint is exactly what this book is trying to counter: the viewpoint that humans have awareness and consciousness and no other living thing does.

What this book says, to me, is that it is not all-or-nothing. It is a continuous spectrum of low level consciousness to high level consciousness.

When a plant does something as simple as bend toward light, something triggered it to grow that way. Now, one can argue that it is merely electrochemical reactions inside the cell, but that's exactly what one could argue about human decisions.

Now, mind you, there is no jibberish about plants having thoughts, emotions, etc.

The point, I think, is that a living organism adapting to the world around it and reacting to their environment and proactively changing in preparation for the future is something more than accidental luck.

A generation ago, the broad consensus was that animals had no awareness or thoughts. I think humankind found this a convenient way to accept that they use them, kill them and eat them. Convenient denial.

It is pretty well understood now that animals have all sorts of complex relationships, emotions, thoughts and language. Again, its a continuum: dolphins are smarter and snails are less.

When I was a kid, we were taught that people can think because we can use tools. Now we know animals use tools extensively. Search youtube for a series on crows solving really abstract complex science problems and tell me they don't "think" in their own way!

Koko learned human sign language and made up appropriate phrases for words she didn't have (she called a ring a "finger bracelet"). Tell me she doesn't use language to think!

A hundred years ago we thought animals don't think and to say other would be preposterous. Today, we don't think plants have any self-direction.

In an animal, we can feel danger or injury via an electrical signal that travels very rapidly through their system. The body reacts to mitigate the danger.

In a plant, I've learned from the book, an injury or danger is felt via a chemical signal that travels (in ultra slow motion) through their system, which then responds to mitigate the danger.

Pretty phenomenal thinking and more scientific that mythological.

[stringjunky]

Originally Posted by devellis

And were all other factors other than "companionship" identical? Are there botanical explanations for why trees might grow differently when in proximity to one another that don't require the attribution of human qualities to those trees? Does any of this provide any evidence of sentience? Or are sentience and community factors that we are aware of in humans and that we may project onto trees essentially a metaphor rather than an actual fact? I guess we can each decide for ourselves what we choose to believe and to what extent we rely on factual evidence to support those beliefs.

I think it's a simple response to competition; isolated trees have none.

[Paultergeist]

Originally Posted by fazool

In a plant, I've learned from the book, an injury or danger is felt via a chemical signal that travels (in ultra slow motion) through their system, which then responds to mitigate the danger.

Well.......so much for being a vegan..........

[Alan Carruth]

Frozen Rat wrote:
"Maybe I need to plant some friends nearby, because where I used to live I had a walnut tree that was next to other fruit trees and it got to near mature size in something like 3 years. Trees seem to be like people. Communal. "

This is part of what Wohlleben was talking about, and a distinct change from what was current thinking only a few years ago. Trees exist as parts of a larger system, which contains other living things, all of which benefit mutually from the association. Forest trees, for example, do best in a different soil community than grass likes. You might think that planting a tree in the lawn, where it can get plenty of light and water, will be good for it, but you may actually be putting it in a challenging position where it will be hard for it to thrive. But none of this is 'planned' in any conscious way; it's simply that different sorts of plants have evolved to thrive in different circumstances.

Could you, nonetheless, say that the tree by itself is 'lonely', in the sense that you would be? That's just the sort of thing we used to love to debate back in those college bull sessions. To the extent that this list is an extension of that sort of thing, have at! As I recall, we never did settle any of those questions there. That's why they are still good for more bull sessions now, more decades on that I care to admit.

Originally Posted by devellis

Sounds like Richard Dawkins. He would certainly argue that it's all about the DNA and the rest of us is merely along for the ride. From an evolutionary perspective, his arguments do make sense, although they're fairly jarring to contemplate.

I think it could have been Dawkins, I do remember reading some of his work. I understand where you're coming from, as illustrated below.

I suspect part of the disagreement centers around how someone defines "learning." ... I still consider whatever trees do to be outside the bounds of my working definition, but I'm fine with someone else using a broader definition, as long as they explain that that's what they're doing.

It sounds like you draw the line at genetic mutation as not being true learning as you know it because it's not about creating something such as a new neural pathway to "remember" something; rather in this case it's part of the intrinsic structure of the being. There are, of course, aspects of DNA that can change a being's behavior depending on environmental pressures. I'm having trouble remembering the term, but it works by loosening or tightening the bounds of the strands of DNA (which are usually pretty tightly bound) and allowing certain genes to be exposed/expressed under certain conditions. I believe I'm speaking of tolomeres that respond to sugars and loosen or tighten depending. Tolomeres are also the prime suspects in the aging process of course since they get frayed over time.

I think of DNA alteration as spanning generations and standard neural learning as the more direct response to change. Trees do not possess brain matter, therefore we cannot attribute neural learning to them until someone proves they possess that. I do however think they respond to their environment in more ways than simply what is intrinsic within their DNA. I believe they have the same capabilities of expressing certain genes, or not, depending upon environmental pressures. I can't prove it. I only have correlative suspicions.