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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Right now we start a three-part farewell to our series #BLTrees, which some of you know began last November. To everyone who's been tweeting us pictures of your tree, the one you followed all year, thank you.
Do a search using #BLTrees and check out the 12 months of photos of our neighbors, the trees. For Friday's show, which will be the very last one in the series, we want you to get creative about your tree, even if you haven't been tweeting pictures, we're inviting you to write a haiku in honor of your tree, or from the point of view of your tree, or about the web of life that trees are part of. Haiku's three lines five, seven, and five syllables if you're following tradition. Tweet your tree pictures and your haikus to #BLTrees, or email them to blshow@wnyc.org with a subject line BLtrees haiku to blshow@wnyc.org as an email address.
We'll read some on the air on Friday and post a bunch to our webpage. Today though, we want to take a step back and do some deep thinking about what trees show us about the interconnectedness of living things, and even about time. For this we are thrilled to be joined by Robert Macfarlane, who's writing about journeys through the natural world around us and under our feet, is exactly where we want to take you.
His book, Underland: A Deep Time Journey from 2019, was a top book of the year here and in England. He's written about mountains and wild places, and according to his Twitter bio, is working on a book that asks, "Is a River alive?" Hello, Robert, welcome to the show.
Robert Macfarlane: Hello, Brian. Thank you so much.
Brian Lehrer: With us through this whole journey has been urban ecologist, Marielle Anzelone, founder of the New York City Wildflower Week and Tree Tour guide extraordinaire. Hello, again, Marielle.
Marielle Anzelone: Hi, Brian. Good morning.
Brian Lehrer: Robert, I'll tell the listeners that in Underland your book that takes us under the surface, both in geology and in imagination, one of the things you explore is what's going on under the forest floor, the new research into the connections and communication between trees and what that teaches us about whether a state of nature is one of competition for resources or of sharing and even to the blurred lines between species.
Can you talk about that shift in viewpoint, if we dare to go there?
Robert Macfarlane: Gladly. It's one of those ideas where, when I met it properly, it's one of those ideas that does change the very grand you walk on. They're few and far between those ideas to it. It's sometimes called wonderfully the wood wide web, and it's this discovery, as it were, that western plant science has made over the last 25 years or so led by forest ecologist called Suzanne Simard.
In a way, that what indigenous communities have known for a very long time, which is that trees talk to one another and we now know that they talk through their roots and they talk by means of a mutualism with fungi. It's a very, very ancient mutualism, probably about 450 million years old. This is a long conversation. The fungi, their high feet penetrate the root tips of trees and then finger out through the soil spread and join tree to tree, to tree, to tree by means of this-- and plant to plant, by means of this cellular penetration of the fungus and the tree route.
This is called the mycorrhizal network or the wood wide web. Anyone listening to this walking in our city park, it's happening under your feet right now.
Brian Lehrer: What do they communicate about?
Robert Macfarlane: They sometimes call the social network of trees as well, which helps us think about it in very contemporary terms. Part of what's happening is just chemical as it were sharing. Carbon is being shared and the fungi can't photosynthesize, they don't have chlorophyll, so they get a kickback, as it were, from their participation in the wood wide web.
It seems more and more clear that trees are able to share their own resources with one another. Suzanne Simard talks about mother trees, trees that gather and give and sustain and nurture.
When you know that trees are connected by this subterranean invisible to our eye, intensely busy underworld labyrinth, then suddenly a forest seems much more like a bustling mega organism than a bunch of individual trees all fighting with one another.
Brian Lehrer: Marielle, is this what you were hoping to teach us this year, ultimately, in our November through October monthly series on trees that were entangled with the natural world, even if we live in, say, a high-rise apartment building in New York City?
Marielle Anzelone: Yes, exactly. I'm so thrilled that Robert is on joining us today to be able to talk about this, because trees are not just the things. I live in a high-rise in Brooklyn, and it's easy to forget sometimes looking out the window and thinking about the way in which we live but even in New York City, there is this web of reciprocity and life all around us. Because we don't physically see it, we forget that trees are giving so much to us and they're doing so much for us, and because of that, then we undervalue the way trees work in our daily lives.
That's exactly what I was hoping to do with this program, is open people's eyes, take the scales off their eyes a little bit, and just have them have this more expansive and curious relationship with their trees. Getting to know them a little more intimately.
Brian Lehrer: Again, listeners, on Friday, when we do our final BLTrees segment in the same slot around 12:10 with Marielle, we're going to be inviting your tree haikus. Write a haiku about the tree you've been following this year, or even more fun, potentially, in the voice of the tree you've been following this year. Tweet your haikus at #BLTrees, that's how we'll most easily see them. Tweet them at #BLTrees or you can email your tree haikus to blshow@wnyc.org.
Robert, you wrote a phrase, "A learned weariness towards anthropomorphism" when talking about the community of tree life in the forest. Can that tendency to anthropomorphize, to give other creatures human motivations, can it be in service of caring about the tree all the way to caring about the planet or where does it cross the line into something to be wary of? Maybe it's a good thing if we personify our tree.
Robert Macfarlane: Definitely, it can be. I got really involved in a city-wide protest against the felling, the organized felling of about 17,000 street trees in Sheffield a few years ago. Watching the community realize that these trees were their neighbors, were their co-citizens, that they stored memory as well as storing carbon. That they joined people, they give things generously, freely, shade and cool, and dreams and stories.
People began to, as you say, anthropomorphize them. They gave them names, they gave them Twitter accounts, that was part of the campaigning. I think it can be really useful, it can bring us into a closer kinship with other beings, but they are also deeply weird trees. They're deeply other to us and us to them.
I do think that they are worlds really. I love to think of them as worlds. Like the English oak, it supports about 2,300 species of which more than 300 are utterly dependent on it for survival. They include bats and invertebrates and liken and us. When you have a little acorn in your hand, you're holding a world in waiting. I love to think of trees as community makers and worlds in themselves.
Brian Lehrer: Marielle, give us a 15-second sound bite to close if you can for today. Maybe to connect the dots from seeing the trees as family to being stewards of the planet. Seriously, 15 seconds.
Marielle Anzelone: Sure. Just that get to know the tree that's closest to you. Falling in love with local trees is good for you and good for the planet, and trees need more voices for their support.
Brian Lehrer: Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland. Marielle Anzelone, we'll talk to you again tomorrow and Friday as we wrap up our #BLTrees year-long series with you. Listeners, thanks for listening today. Tweet your tree photos, tweet your tree haikus, and stay tuned for Alison Stewart and All Of It coming up next among many other things with Alison today.
Dan Pashman, host of the Sporkful Podcast offers tips on saving money at lunchtime, including how to pack healthy, easy, and tasty lunches, plus your calls and questions with suggestions. Dan Pashman and Alison and more coming up right after the news here on WNYC. I'll talk to you tomorrow.
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