Trees, Trees, Trees
Did you know the oldest trees on Earth all have names? How old is the oldest tree? Did you know that trees are actually incredibly social–helping each other grow through fungal networks?
Hi everyone!
I had this topic of trees as my inspiration for this week, and as I was writing and finding fascinating things about trees to share, I realized that I actually had a lot of thoughts about trees, human rights, and our relationship to nature. Consider this newsletter like a small teaser of these really cool (at least to me!) tree research I’ve been reading and thinking about and I am now mapping out a longer-form essay on these topics which I’m excited to dive deeper into than what this little collection of things will allow me to do right now! I hope you enjoy anyway!
BIOLOGY
All across the world, the oldest trees on Earth all have their own names.
I recently learned that the world’s oldest trees all have names (well, most of them, some are just numbers). Different trees from all across the world have names–”The Sisters”, an olive tree in Lebanon is ~6,000 years old; “The Ancient Yew” is a Yew tree in the UK and is approximately 4,000 years; “Gran Abuelo” a Patagonian cypress in Chile of approximately 5,400 years.
Check out the full list on Wikipedia!
A sad note, is that the world’s actually oldest tree, “Prometheus”, a Great Basin bristlecone pine, was cut down (with permission) by a graduate student researcher who was trying to date the tree.1 The student went on to deeply regret their decision. The oldest living Bristlecone Pine is “Methuselah” and is over 4,500 years old (pictured above).
There’s also a really interesting article from Smithsonian Magazine about a list of notable oldest trees as well!
BIOLOGY
Trees are social creatures; they foster relationships with each other like mother and child, exchanging nutrients and resources.
In recent research over the last year, conducted and popularized by Suzanne Simard, a professor forest ecology at the University of British Columbia, it has been revealed that the mycorrhizal networks underground that connect with tree roots were being used by trees to pass nutrients and resources like carbon and nitrogen between each other. These networks resemble “neural networks in the [our] brain”.2
[Suzanne Simard] discovered that old trees feed new trees a cocktail of nutrients necessary for survival and change the ingredients of the cocktail in response to climatic conditions. She even found old trees recognize their own kin, preferentially distributing nutrients to their offspring over seedlings that took root in their shade carried there by wind or dropped by a bird or animal.3
Mother Trees can also talk with other trees and warn them about dangers that are impending.
In one study, Simard watched as a Douglas fir that had been injured by insects appeared to send chemical warning signals to a ponderosa pine growing nearby. The pine tree then produced defense enzymes to protect against the insect.
In addition to warning each other of danger, Simard says that trees have been known to share nutrients at critical times to keep each other healthy. She says the trees in a forest are often linked to each other via an older tree she calls a "mother" or "hub" tree.
"In connecting with all the trees of different ages, [the mother trees] can actually facilitate the growth of these understory seedlings," she says. "The seedlings will link into the network of the old trees and benefit from that huge uptake resource capacity. And the old trees would also pass a little bit of carbon and nutrients and water to the little seedlings, at crucial times in their lives, that actually help them survive."4
Simard has turned her research into a nonprofit and political call for action to save forest ecosystems: The Mother Tree Project. There’s some amazing information and resources there, so highly recommend checking it out and learning more!
This topic also reminded me of how much of the discourse in the scientific community around trees and ecology from the 50’s to the 70’s or so in the USA was politically oriented to be only focused on “individualism” and “competition”. With the Cold War and the Truman Doctrine, it wasn’t proper to discuss ‘communism’ as it related to ecology, and the discussion of how organisms in forest ecosystems would help each other out was social and professional death.5 Glad we’re no longer in these times.
BIOLOGY
They have names, but what about legal rights? Corporations have the legal rights as persons, so why not trees?
In Quebec, there is a river, Mutuhekau Shipu, that owns itself, stewarded by the Innu First Nations. In Alabama, the “Tree That Owns Itself” AKA “Jackson Oak”, and the subsequent “Son of the Tree That Owns Itself” grow peacefully on the side of a road. In New Zealand, the Whanganiu River was granted “personhood” in 2017, and, like the Mutujekau Shipu, is stewarded by the Whanganui Iwi, a collective of Māori from local tribes.6
For the Innu First Nations, the Magpie, or Mutuhekau Shipu, has always been alive, it is a highway, a pharmacy, and a place of healing.7 The ruling that the river is now a legal person is path forward for conservation of the ecosystem, repatriation and justice for historical wrongdoings against First Nations peoples of Canada, and a path forward for environmentalism.
Joint rulings from the Ekuanitshit band council and MRC Minganie regional authority declared the Magpie a legal person with nine rights including the rights to be free from pollution, to sue, and to have legal guardians – a first in Canada.
“This mechanism we are using for the legal personhood for the river is because the river has a spirit. For us it’s alive,” said Shanice Mollen-Picard, a member of the Ekuanitshit committee that advocated for the personhood definition. “It’s a chance to say to the government that you’re not the only one who’s going to make decisions. We are here and we’re going to stand up and we’re going to protect the river no matter what.”8
The idea that trees could and should have legal personhood was first proposed by a philosophy professor Christopher Stone in 1972. He published a paper entitled “Should Trees Have Standing”, discussing whether or not trees and natural features should have the same legal rights of corporations. Corporations, after all, have the legal rights of people; “corporate personhood”.
This really gets into the heart of where I wanted to dive deeper, and write a longer-form opinion/essay piece on this. Should trees and other natural landmarks of wonder and importance be given their own legal rights, to allow themselves, through stewards, to advocate on their own behalf against environmental destruction? When it becomes a legal battle between an extractive industrial corporation and a forest ecosystem, why should the corporation have more legal rights than the ecosystem, simply for profit sake alone? Should animals have legal rights? Should we simply take the “personhood” rights of corporations away? What does “personhood” really mean for a corporation? What does the personhood of a river look like in effect? What has changed in New Zealand following the river’s personhood decision? Why should these old and incredible trees above have names and histories and cultural associations, religious value, yet still be so far from “personhood”?
The story of the “Tree That Owns Itself” is a bit of a funny one; the owner of the tree, Colonial William Henry Jackson, simply loved the tree, and when he passed, willed the deed of the ownership of the tree and its land to the tree itself.9
Since I only have many questions here, I’ll give a little poll; should trees and mountains and glaciers and rivers have the legal rights of personhood or does this only muddy the waters?
WEBINAR
I’m hosting another free webinar (the last for a while) on Sustainable Design!
I hated promoting the Webinar so strongly in the Substack title/biline last week, so I figured I’d just pop this announcement in the middle of the email here as an addition to the normal content. I’m hosting another free webinar - by myself this time! on introductions to sustainable graphic design. It’s happening this Friday at 11am PST - but there will be a replay sent out to everyone who signs up for a ticket, so there’s no need to attend live if you’re interested!
It will be approximately an hour going into more detail on sustainable design: where to start, what to know, what paper certifications to look for, why one should consider sustainability in design and more! There will be a 15 minute Q&A period as well! If you’ve got a question feel free to email it to me before or after the session and I’ll answer it live or afterwards!
This has all been in preparation of re-launching the community calls in our Green Graphic Design course (our only paid offering for learning sustainable design). There will be one Substack dedicated to the course and its details, but then there won’t be any more promotion until late summer or fall.
Really looking forward to doing more research and writing on these ideas!
Take care,
Emma
If you enjoyed this and aren’t subscribed to this Substack, consider subscribing! And please, if you feel like chatting, feel free to leave a comment or reply to this email! I love talking with everyone. Substack has been a really positive experience so far (especially in contrast to Instagram which I struggle with), and I am having a grand time building this little community.
Magazine, Smithsonian, and Jared Farmer. ‘The Science Behind the Oldest Trees on Earth’. Smithsonian Magazine, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-science-behind-the-oldest-trees-on-earth-180981372/. Accessed 21 Feb. 2023.
Davies, Dave. ‘Trees Talk To Each Other. “Mother Tree” Ecologist Hears Lessons For People, Too’. NPR, 4 May 2021. NPR, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/05/04/993430007/trees-talk-to-each-other-mother-tree-ecologist-hears-lessons-for-people-too.
Narwhal, The. ‘Finding the Mother Tree: Ecologist Suzanne Simard Offers Solutions to B.C.’s Forest Woes’. The Narwhal, https://thenarwhal.ca/suzanne-simard-mother-tree-profile/. Accessed 21 Feb. 2023.
Davies, Dave. ‘Trees Talk To Each Other. “Mother Tree” Ecologist Hears Lessons For People, Too’. NPR, 4 May 2021. NPR, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/05/04/993430007/trees-talk-to-each-other-mother-tree-ecologist-hears-lessons-for-people-too.
Janine Benyus, “Reciprocity,” Paul Hawken, ed., Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming (Penguin, 2017), pgs. 212–215.
Evans, Kate. The New Zealand River That Became a Legal Person. https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20200319-the-new-zealand-river-that-became-a-legal-person. Accessed 21 Feb. 2023.
‘This Wild River in Quebec Is Now Considered a Person. How Will It Help with Conservation?’ The Globe and Mail, 19 Dec. 2021. www.theglobeandmail.com, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-this-wild-river-in-quebec-is-now-considered-a-person-how-will-it-help/.
‘This Wild River in Quebec Is Now Considered a Person. How Will It Help with Conservation?’ The Globe and Mail, 19 Dec. 2021. www.theglobeandmail.com, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-this-wild-river-in-quebec-is-now-considered-a-person-how-will-it-help/.
‘Tree That Owns Itself’. Wikipedia, 14 Dec. 2022. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tree_That_Owns_Itself&oldid=1127422517.