Trees like Lungs

[Empyrean]

I went to see the corpse exhibition a while ago in Dublin, and one of the things that stuck out was that when the capilliaries and blood vessels of the lungs and heart are laid out bare without the surrounding flesh, they reminded me so much of trees.

It reminded me of the principle of fractals, that nature repeats simple algorithms to produce complex shapes. It made me feel my lungs as flowers and trees, quite literally absorbing oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide.

Just how accurate those were, made me feel very at home on earth. Like I am quite similarly shaped to all other life forms here.

One thing that really stands out to me, is that trees have their roots in soil, at the bottom of their body - but our 'tree' seems to have it's root in the brain, the trunk as the spinal column which reaches down into the limbs with it's branches which move blood instead of water and sap. Our limbs reach out into the world like their branches, grasping out nourishment like they do the sun. Limbs formed for what they need, as are ours. Ours are so smart, they grasp and bring food to our mouth - and especially our lungs. We pull the air in, grasp it with our internal branches and leaves/bronchi, and pull it to our roots and to our limbs - to feed the soil that is our brain manually.

I'm quite in love with us. We're wonderful little trees.

[Badger1777]

If only we were half as sophisticated as trees:smile:

We can't photosythesise. We can't regenerate our bodies like a tree can. If someone rips one of our arms off, that's it. We wont have another in its place by next summer. Unlike a tree, we'd get pretty upset of a couple of hundred or so different species of insects and birds were to build their homes on us.

But this is the bit the really impresses me, purely because it baffles the boffins, trees can communicate. I don't mean some spiritual thing (although they can do that), I mean actual measurable, provable intercommunication. It baffles the scientists because although they can observe it, and test results are repeatable, they're not entirely sure how or why. The classic test is a tree is put under stress, simulating an insect swarm attack, and neighbouring trees immediately ramp up production of insect repellent chemicals. The first theory was that they releases some airborne chemical to get the 'distress call' out, but this didn't quite fit, as no significant release was detected in tests every time, and weather conditions, which would affect communication via airborne chemicals, didn't seem to stop the message getting out.

Then some scientists discovered something really profound. Its common knowledge in horticulture that the ground is full of a network of fungi, and that the fungi helps feed the plants in return for the plants helping feed the fungi. But the profound discovery is that plants also use fungi as their own sort of internet. They actually send messages to each other through the fungi.

http://pested.ifas.ufl.edu/newsletters/2013-06/fungal.html

I've long known that everything is in fact one thing. We are all part of the same single thing. If trees being home for all sorts, providing food and shelter, and communicating underground via fungi is not proof of this, then I don't know what is.

[Empyrean]

Awesome post Badger.

I remember reading about that, and it gets very interesting. David Attenborough's life of plants was incredible for it too.

Senses in animals/humans as well as plants are essentially when an organism has a chemical response to something in it's environment. I believe the experience of senses comes from the senses themselves, and so if a tree is able to communicate - it can experience within itself a form of communication.

It's a buddhist philosophical understanding that mind is body, one and the same - and so something's physical behaviour is the physical appearance of the mind of that being.

I think all living parts have 'mind', but not necessarily time-specific, and not necessarily pain-pleasure experiences. But if it does something, it is something.

[Morpheus]

Well, Badger, there are those who claim to subsist on nothing but air and sun.

I recall reading one article where an anthropologist referred to Trees and Plants as our most ancient ancestors, existing before any other multicell organism on Earth.


In fact also, there is a video documentary out that reveals that most of the Plant's activity is underground, and unseen. They have families, communities, relationships, and at times wage war, underground, defending their territory and such.
I once had two Pines planted near each other, within a few yards. One started failing.
I added extra water, to no avail. I wondered if it was the Gopher activity, but didn't think Gophers liked Pine roots, and also, why was only one failing and not the other. It was after it died that I read about the above research.

When they sped up the video of this underground activity, it revealed that trees and plants, involving their roots and rhisomes, behave like animals.

We're told also that Trees are, in fact, "The Lungs of the Planet".

[abaddon]

I've always loved trees. As a child, i would climb them and build tree houses in them.

Often times when meditating my mind would hold an image of the cottonwood trees swaying in the wind from the home I grew up at.

A tree's DNA is very similar to human DNA. There is a deep connection humans have to trees seeing as how we share such basic building blocks. It's not surprising that a tree is a symbol of peace and enlightenment.

[Emmalevine]

Funnily enough the other day I was eating some curly kale and thought about the similarity to our lungs.