Are Trees Alive?

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Botanical Record-Breakers". W.P Armstrong. Archived from the original on 19 December 2010 . Retrieved 7 May 2008.

We could have done more with this mini tree inquiry, but we ran out of time. In my notes, I wrote down that there were some great connections made between trees and breathing that could have been explored further. Never enough time in the kindergarten day or year! Try a Tree Inquiry!The earliest plants on land were herbaceous — soft, non-woody plants like herbs and grasses that generally grow low to the ground. But the moment one plant grew taller than the others, there was competition for sunlight.

Alive with a height of 83.8 meters (275ft), a diameter of 11m (36ft) at its base, and an estimated bole volume of 1,487m 3 (52,513 cu ft), it is the largest known living single-stem tree, and among the tallest, widest, and longest-lived of all trees on the planet. [48] [49] Larocque wonders what the best metaphor is for these exchanges, and for the flow of nutrients from mother trees to their neighbors and offspring. “Is it a sharing hippie lovefest? Is it an economic relationship? Or do mother trees just get leaky when they’re old? I think all these things are happening, but we don’t know.”A tree leaves a legacy. While alive, it provides shade, home for many animals and a lifeline to fungi and other trees. When it dies, it continues to play an important role. It gives a boost to new trees ready to take its place, shelter to a different set of animals and, eventually, nourishment for the next generation of living things. Scientists are only just beginning to learn the language of trees, in Larocque’s view. “We don’t know what they’re saying with pheromones most of the time. We don’t know how they communicate within their own bodies. They don’t have nervous systems, but they can still feel what’s going on, and experience something analogous to pain. When a tree is cut, it sends electrical signals like wounded human tissue.” a b May, Michael R; Provance, Mitchell C; Sanders, Andrew C; Ellstrand, Norman C; Ross-Ibarra, Jeffrey (December 2009). "A Pleistocene Clone of Palmer's Oak Persisting in Southern California". PLOS ONE. 4 (12): e8346. Bibcode: 2009PLoSO...4.8346M. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008346. PMC 2796394. PMID 20041136.

Tree longevity interests researchers in part because trees and other plants remove carbon from the atmosphere for photosynthesis, and older trees are thought to store more carbon than younger ones. The persistence of trees could thus play a role in slowing climate change (although rising temperatures caused by global warming also can put a strain on trees, making them more vulnerable to environmental threats). The rings of old trees can also serve as an invaluable record of climate history, with wider rings indicating better years. Alerce Milenario in Chile is thought to be over 5,000 years old. (Image credit: Martin Bernetti/Getty Images) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08912963.2022.2150549?journalCode=ghbi20 Vento, Bárbara; Agrain, Federico; Puebla, Griselda (2022). "Ancient Antarctica: the early evolutionary history of Nothofagus". Historical Biology: 1–11. doi: 10.1080/08912963.2022.2150549. S2CID 256792206.For example, she says it would be hard to measure whether age had made a tree more susceptible to disease, or less structurally sound so it's more likely to fall over in a windstorm. He began to question the orthodoxies of his profession after visiting a few privately managed forests in Germany, which were not thinned, sprayed or logged by machine. “The trees were so much bigger and more plentiful,” he says. “Very few trees needed to be felled to make a handsome profit and it was done using horses to minimize the impact.”

Now you must be wondering, how did Bose prove his theory of plants being alive and being classified as living things? Bose's search to prove his thesis made use of the Crescograph. The tool was able to monitor the growth of plants by giving a more magnified view of the growth of the plants. This gave Bose all the proof he needed to show the world of science a plant was in fact a living thing, similar to animals and humans. Bose proved that a plant is able to grow, has a nervous system, and its growth depended on different factors. This study was also able to demonstrate that introducing many different stimuli to plants changes the way a plant grows. Nearly one-third of trees — more than 17,500 species — are threatened with extinction. This is more than twice the number of threatened mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles combined 1. Mass plantings of trees, paradoxically, often add to the problem by using single species. Will there be trees in 2050? Lara, Antonio; Villalba, Ricardo (21 May 1993). "A 3620-Year Temperature Record from Fitzroya cupressoides Tree Rings in Southern South America". Science. 260 (5111): 1104–1106. Bibcode: 1993Sci...260.1104L. doi: 10.1126/science.260.5111.1104. PMID 17806339. S2CID 46397540. Pappagallo, Linda (2013-01-08). "The World's Oldest Olive Trees are Lebanese - Green Prophet" . Retrieved 2023-10-20.How the wood wide web functions in a forest is still not well understood, but scientists do know that the fungi forming these networks are important for keeping trees healthy. Afterlife of a tree