Tree Weaver

This bonsai tree was planted in 1625 and survived the bombing of Hiroshima and is still growing today

Many people forget that trees are much older than human beings. In fact, there is even one Bonsai tree that has lived to be 396-years-old. It was first planted into the earth in 1625 and is now located at the United States National Arboretum in Washington D.C. A bonsai master from Japan named Masaru Yamaki gave the bonsai tree to the United States as a gift in 1976. At the time, the National Arboretum did not realize that the tree had survived the Hiroshima bombing in 1945. Yamaki and his family were just two miles away from the area where the American military dropped the B-29 atomic bomb, which wiped out 90% of the city and resulted in the death of 140,000 Japanese people.

But besides some minor glass related injuries Yamaki and his family did not get killed by the explosion. Furthermore, they kept the bonsai tree inside where it was safe with them.

In 2001, the truth about the tree was finally revealed after the grandsons of Yamaki visited the tree at the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum. The museum doesn’t typically advertise the history of the tree when you go there. However, you can now find its history of surviving Hiroshima on the museum’s website.

Through a Japanese translator, the grandsons told the story of their grandfather and the tree’s miraculous survival. Two years later, Takako Yamaki Tatsuzaki, Yamaki’s daughter also visited the museum hoping to see her father’s tree.

The museum and the Yamaki family maintain a friendly relationship and it is due to these visits that the curators know the precious value of the Yamaki Pine.

“After going through what the family had gone through, to even donate one was pretty special and to donate this one was even more special,” says Jack Sustic, curator of the Bonsai and Penjing museum. Yamaki’s donation of this tree, which had been in his family for at least six generations, is a symbol of the amicable relationship that emerged between the countries in the years following World War II. Dignitaries in attendance at the dedication ceremony for the trees included John D. Hodgson, ambassador to Japan, Japanese Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who said the gift from Japan represented the “care, thought, attention and long life we expect our two peoples to have.”

Today, more than 300 trees make their home at the museum, including bonsai grown in North America and penjing, the Chinese bonsai equivalent.

There are many misconceptions about bonsai, Sustic says. It’s not a type of tree because anything with a woody trunk can be bonsai. Rather, it’s an art form and for the bonsai master, “it’s a lifestyle,” he explains. Another common error is the proper pronunciation of bonsai; it’s BONE-sigh, not BAHN-sigh.

Bonsai trees can be cultivated from trees collected in the wild or in rare cases from seeds; for those whose thumbs are a little less green, they can be purchased at a nursery. They are planted in large containers and pruned frequently to maintain their silhouette. Sometimes, as in the case of the Yamaki Pine, multiple trees are grafted together to enhance the appearance of the tree. Though bonsai masters maintain a degree of artistic freedom they still look to nature for inspiration, recreating what they see in the natural world on a bonsai scale.

“It’s a marriage between horticulture and art,” but it’s unique because it’s always growing,” Sustic says while admiring the Yamaki Pine.

Because they are always growing, bonsai trees require daily attention. Sustic even likens caring for a bonsai tree to having a pet. But it’s due to this constant attention that bonsai like the Yamaki Pine live beyond the natural life expectancy of the trees from which they come.

The Yamaki Pine takes its familiar place near the entrance to the museum’s new Japanese Pavilion when it officially opened in 2016, and on the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, the tree serves as a reminder of the continued peace between the United States and Japan.

“It’s a very special tree,” Sustic says.

Reference https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/390-year-old-tree-survived-bombing-hiroshima-180956157/

The 385-million-year-old fossils show that trees evolved modern features millions of years earlier than previously estimated.

The world’s oldest forest fossils were located in an abandoned quarry near Cairo, New York.

Research of site specimens suggests that the forebearers to modern plants evolved much earlier than expected.

The findings help scientists better understand how trees advanced life’s evolutionary trajectory to land during a critical period.

Beginning 416 million years ago, this period of the Paleozoic era blazed the trail toward manufacturing a surface habitable to life.

New plant species evolved that could survive on dry land. The fresh-faced forests drew carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, beginning a process that would drastically refashion the planet’s climate. Insects and arachnids proliferated, while early tetrapods flirted with land’s safety in the newly-formed wetlands – allowing many animal ancestors to escape the mass extinction event soon to devastate the Earth’s oceans.

Flash forward to 2019, researchers in an abandoned quarry near Cairo, New York, have discovered a 385-million-year-old Devonian forest, the world’s oldest to date. Their findings, published in Current Biology, are helping scientists better understand the enigmatic origins of terrestrial life.

Today, this ancient arboretum exists in the form of fossilized root systems. Slices of prehistoric botany spread horizontally across the ground, with the quarry acting like a giant, stone microscope slide. Some roots measure 15 centimeters in diameter and form 11-meter-wide radial patterns.

“The Cairo site is very special,” paleobotanist Christopher Berry, a team member at Cardiff University, told Science. “You are walking through the roots of ancient trees. Standing on the quarry surface, we can reconstruct the living forest around us in our imagination.”

After analysing the root systems, the researchers suggest the presence of three different groups of extinct plants: Eospermatopteris, Archaeopteris, and a currently obscure specimen.

Eospermatopteris was a palm tree-like plant well-represented in the Devonian fossil record. These trees had lofty trunks that crowned into “branchlets”—effectively frond-like groupings of stalks that were photosynthetic yet predated broad, flat leaves. They reproduced by spores and sported a rudimentary root system with a limited range.

Considered an intermediate between land plants and the ancestors to modern ferns and horsetails, Eospermatopteris is plentiful at another fossil forest located nearby, at a quarry near Gilboa, New York. The Gilboa site was the previous record holder for the oldest fossil forest.

But the other two root systems are unique to the Cairo site. Archaeopteris shares several characteristics with modern seed plants. These characteristics, many assembled in tandem for the first time in the fossil record, include an upright habit, laminate leaves, endogenous root production, and more contemporary vascular systems.

Archaeopteris’s appearance at the Cairo site means the genus took root roughly 20 million years earlier than previous estimates. The discovery helps clarify the enigmatic evolution of trees and forests during the Devonian period, as well as the indelible ripple effect they had on Earth’s ecology, geochemical cycles, and atmospheric makeup.

As for the third specimen, it is represented by a single obscure root system. The researchers postulate it may belong to the class Lycopsida, a.k.a. “scale trees.” These trees dominated the Late Carboniferous coal swamps, and the oldest fossils date back to the Late Devonian. However, like Archaeopteris, its presence at the Cairo site may push current estimates deeper into prehistory.

“Our findings are perhaps suggestive that these plants were already in the forest, but perhaps in a different environment, earlier than generally believed. Yet we only have a footprint, and we await additional fossil evidence for confirmation,” William Stein, the study’s first author and an emeritus professor of biological science at Binghamton University, said in a statement.

He added, “It seems to me, worldwide, many of these kinds of environments are preserved in fossil soils. And I’d like to know what happened historically, not just in the Catskills, but everywhere.”

When and how trees began evolving modern root and vascular systems, as well as their upright habit, remain a mystery. But Archaeopteris’s elongated rooting systems appear identical to trees that would become numerous in the Carboniferous period’s vast swamp forests.

As trees evolved these root systems, they began pulling carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turning it into carbonate ions in groundwater. These ions then flowed into the oceans where they were locked away in limestone, preventing them from re-entering the atmosphere. This development added a new wrinkle to Earth’s substance turnovers.

Originally, carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere constituted more than 95 percent. Soon after the introduction of vascular plants and forests, these levels began dropping to modern levels. By the Carboniferous, oxygen levels reached an all-time high of 35 percent. Today, they remain at a respectable, and livable, 21 percent. Thanks to vascular plants.

Vascular plants have modified other geological cycles on a planet-wide scale, too. These include deposition and erosion, the physical characteristics of soil, and the cycle of freshwater and various elements.

As Stein noted – The effects were of first order magnitude, in terms of changes in ecosystems, what happens on the Earth’s surface and oceans, in global atmosphere, CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere, and global climate. So many dramatic changes occurred at that time as a result of those original forests that basically, the world has never been the same since.

Today, Devonian plants and their Carboniferous progeny are again altering the Earth’s climate, but in a way that is making the world less hospitable to life.

After being buried for millions of years, the remains of these giant plants transformed under the heat and pressure to create the large reserves of coal that drove the Industrial Revolution. In fact, the name “Carboniferous” references to the rich coal deposits found in this geologic layer and literally means “coal-bearing.”

As we continue to burn these ancient fossil fuels, we release the carbon dioxide they trapped back into the atmosphere, where they heat up our planet by way of an enhanced “greenhouse effect.” Ironically, it seems powering our planet with these plants’ remains is undoing the hard work the world’s first forests endeavoured.

Reference ~ https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(19)31569-6?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0960982219315696%3Fshowall%3Dtrue#secsectitle0020

https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/worlds-oldest-forest?rebelltitem=3#rebelltitem3

If you are feeling anxious, sad, or drained, try hugging a tree and allow her vast amount of grounding energy to assist you.

Trees are among the world’s greatest givers. Their slow and gentle life cycles provide the world with clean air, their roots filter water, and their majestically spreading branches provide shade. Full of vibrant, natural energy, trees can also give us the gifts of peace and nurturance. Hugging or sitting with your spine against the trunk of any tree can ground your body and inspire a profound closeness with nature as the energy of the tree connects to you. Making physical contact with a tree can help you relax, alleviate stress, sleep more deeply, and hold on to more positive energy. Trees can absorb great amounts of energy and have the ability to soak up harmful energy from deep within you. If you are feeling anxious, sad, drained, or tense, then try hugging a tree.

Go to the woods, a garden, or a park, and find a tree that you would like to hug. Stand next to the tree and close your eyes. Relax your senses while breathing in the scent of leaves and bark. Listen to the creaking of the branches. When you feel settled, open your eyes, keeping them unfocused, and walk around its trunk. Feel the unique energy of the tree as your auras meet each other. Ask the tree for permission to touch it. If you feel the tree saying yes to you, begin breathing in its energy. Put your arms around the trunk and press your face to its bark. Embrace the tree for as long as you wish, feeling the roughness of its wood and the strength of its years. Relax into that strength and let the tree support you. You may even be able to physically feel a cyclical flow of energy taking place between your body and the tree.

You can sit with your back pressed to the tree for the same effect if you feel more comfortable doing so. Likewise, if you are seeking greater comfort, you may want to wrap your legs and arms around the tree, either at the base or by straddling a branch. Remember to thank the tree because by hugging your tree you are drinking from the well of natural copious energy cultivated by the tree’s many years on this earth.

Post by Maryanne Savino

There is a network of information that streams through life within and around us.

Trees are one of the most beautiful examples of this network, incredibly able to thrive in dying soil. They do so by communicating not only with one another, but with the other species around them that are able to produce the nutrients they need.

This magic happens through the phenomenon of quorum sensing.

When quorum sensing is reached, a threshold of a population is passed and hyper intelligence becomes the norm. In this true synergistic development, an entire population becomes greater than any sum of its parts.

Which leads me to wonder: What would happen when we start quorum sensing as mammals? What would happen if humans would communicate more clearly through our thought processes?

Through quorum sensing, I believe we could all see that we are not each unique in consciousness.

To reach this level, we’re going to have to quiet our human minds long enough to listen to the nature that we are within. If we continue to let our distracting thoughts prevail, we’ll continue believing we are the ultimate beings who deserve to control life around us.

But if we can humble ourselves long enough to simply listen, we could open our minds to the possibility that we could quorum sense — not only with the macro life around us, but the micro life within us.

How acutely can we tune into the greater intelligence of Mother Earth?

How deep can our roots communicate with one another?

How can we create a new energetic flow within ourselves?

I’m encouraged to find out.

If we could maintain a humble listening status as a species, where we stop telling the world what we see and start listening to what she sees, we’ll have the space to view ourselves differently in this web of intelligence. Through quorum sensing, we’ll get to become a hyper-conscious, hyper-intelligent player and co-creator within our greater environment.

The rest of this episode with The Happy Pear is ready for you to experience: https://thehappypear.ie/podcast/episode-9-zach-bush-md/

https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/tara-turner

https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/tara-turner