Trees!

February 5th, 2022| Topic: RaMbLeS | 0

There is, apparently, a singular key to the health of forests all over the world. So say researchers from The Center for Tree Science, The Morton Arboretum (Lisle, IL), and from Tuscia University in Italy and the University of Barcelona in Spain, in an article in Nature Plants: “Old and Ancient Trees Are Life History Lottery Winners and Vital Evolutionary Resources for Long-Term Adaptive Capacity.”

Yup, that’s the key: some ancient trees.

Those scientists say that a rare breed of ancient trees, a small number of them that date back centuries—usually 10–20 times older than the average plant species in that forest!—provide genetic and evolutionary benefits to the rest of the environment.

Dr. Chuck Cannon, director of The Morton Arboretum’s Center for Tree Science:

We examined the demographic patterns that emerge from old-growth forests over thousands of years, and a very small proportion of trees emerge as life-history ‘lottery winners’ that reach far higher ages that bridge environmental cycles that span centuries.”

These old specimens, making up fewer than 1% of the trees in the environment, have survived countless environmental changes, that has allowed them to pass on their genetic resilience to the rest of the forest-dwelling organisms which sprout up around them. That trees communicate with other flora around them is a well-accepted fact.

Cannon:

In our models, these rare, ancient trees prove to be vital to a forest’s long-term adaptive capacity, substantially broadening the temporal span of the population’s overall genetic diversity.”

Study authors say the ancient trees radically change the genetic diversity and health of the surrounding trees which arrive later on. All of this keeps forests from dying out, while thriving for thousands of years.

Which also means that deforestation threatens to clear out these life-giving landmarks. The team found evidence that the overall mortality rate of trees is increasing as humans spread out into previously uninhabited green spaces. And once these trees are gone, they’re gone. Their environmental models show that it’s becoming increasingly hard for trees to reach the impressive ages of existing ancient trees. Simply put, there may be no way to replace an ancient tree that takes care of a forest once they die.

Cannon again:

Once you cut down old and ancient trees, we lose the genetic and physiological legacy that they contain forever.”

The paper concludes:

We argue that, despite the rarity of these individuals, they play a significant role maintaining diversity in the population and bridging across unusual and infrequent environmental conditions. Second, a larger proportion of individuals reach significant ages many times greater than the median age. These old individuals contribute substantially to the stabilization of population diversity to intermediate environmental change.”

This is not at all surprising. As it is for trees, so it is for people, too.

Indeed, the aged are like trees!

The righteous like a palm tree will flourish,
like a cedar in Lebanon he will grow high.
Planted in the house of Yahweh—
in the courts of our God they will flourish.
They will still prosper in old age;
healthy and fresh they will be,
to proclaim that Yahweh is upright—
my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.
Psalm 92:12–14

And, honoring the “ancients” is paralleled to fearing God:

“You shall rise up before the grayheaded and honor the aged,
and you shall revere your God; I am Yahweh.
Leviticus 19:32

You can’t replace them. So …

Listen to your father [and father figures] who begot you,
And do not despise your mother [and mother figures] when she is old.
Proverbs 23:22

SOURCES:
Morton Arboretum; Nature Plants