How to Read a Tree
Episode Stats
Summary
Tristan Gooley is an adventurer, expedition leader, natural navigator, and author of How to Read a Tree. Today on the show, he unpacks the clues in a tree s shape, branches, bark, roots and leaves, and how they can tell you about the environment and help you find your way. We also talk about what looking at a tree stump can reveal about the hidden seasons in trees, and the first place to look for fall foliage.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast
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when you're walking in the woods you're often surrounded by trees but you probably don't
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notice them much and when you do spot some irregularity like a strange bulge in the trunk
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of a tree you likely don't have any idea how it got there but my guest says these trees you're
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passing by have all kinds of stories to share and once you learn their language they can tell you
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all sorts of secrets about the world and even help you navigate it tristan gooley is an adventurer
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expedition leader natural navigator and author of how to read a tree today on the show he unpacks
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the clues in a tree's shape branches bark roots and leaves what they can tell you about the
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environment and how they can help you find your way we also talk about what looking at a tree stump
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can reveal the hidden seasons in trees and the first place to look in a tree to spy fall foliage
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we end our conversation with how to get started with reading trees today after the show's over
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check out our show notes at awimp.is slash read a tree
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all right tristan gooley welcome back to the show
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thanks brett so we've had you on the podcast a few times to talk about how to navigate your world
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just by looking at your environment and you got a new book along the same lines but this is called
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how to read a tree clues and patterns from bark to leaf so this is how we can look at trees
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and we can navigate with trees you know get our bearings in the world but also what i love about it
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is you answer some questions that i've had whenever i'm out on a hike and i'm looking at a tree
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for example like one we'll talk about today i hope is you know you're walking you see this tree and
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there's like this weird bulbous growth in the middle of the trunk and then it goes back to normal
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like what is going on there and what i love about all your books and i got this with this book too
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is when you read it you immediately have things that you start looking at in your environment that
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just opens up like new worlds that you didn't know existed you kind of it feels like you're in on a
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secret and so we're going to learn about the secrets of trees today but before we talk about that
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you start off the book saying that in order to read a tree it's not really important for people
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to know the different species of a tree to get the benefit of reading trees why is that
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i think people can be put off nature by thinking it's about identification but we have to remember that
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we've evolved to to find meaning in nature without names all over the world you'll find different names
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for exactly the same tree so there isn't a correct one latin is no use to indigenous people and they
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have some of the strongest skills in this area so names are not the answer to finding meaning what we
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you know have a lot of success with is if we realize that nothing is random and every color every
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shape and every pattern is trying to reveal something about the life the tree has been through
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and once we just sort of take that little shift in philosophy we find we are surrounded by clues every
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single thing we see is revealing something and so while you don't say we should focus on individual
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species it is useful to know about you know broad families of trees because different families of
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trees will tell us different things about the environment and like the broadest categories we can look at
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when it comes to trees are whether they're a conifer or a broadleaf tree what can we learn about the
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environment depending on whether we see more conifers or broadleaf trees there
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yeah i think even people new to the idea of of looking at trees are comfortable with the idea
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that if we've got very dark needle-like foliage that it's a conifer and the conifers as a group
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evolved first and they have a simple tough architecture and they are really good when the
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going gets tough if the environment is particularly cold particularly hot very exposed to winds or very
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dry or the soil is a bit inhospitable then conifers have they've grown up to deal with that broadleaf
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trees came later and they're more efficient but they have a more delicate system so if the going's
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easy if there's enough moisture in the soil it's not too hot not too cold the broadleaf trees are more
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efficient so they will start to out-complete the conifers and what we find is if we see loads of
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broadleaf trees and again we don't have to worry about names we can just sort of go there are a load of
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broadleafs there then we can say the going's pretty easy there's enough moisture and it's not too tough
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which means we're likely to find a lot of other smaller plants a lot of animals a lot of insects
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a lot of birds and most likely a lot of human beings as well human beings are pretty soft creatures as
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nature goes so we tend to live in places where there are broadleaf trees if we see conifers there's
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something tough in the environment so whenever we see conifers we just pause and go what's tough
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sometimes it's obvious because we're looking you know halfway up a big mountain but it's always worth
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yeah i think here in oklahoma so a lot of broadleaf trees but then you get into sort of the more rocky
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mountainous parts and you just see pine trees primarily something like southeast oklahoma and so
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you think well the soil is rough here so obviously a conifer would grow here
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yeah and that's a one one of the ways i think of it is when you're when you might be happier in an
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all-terrain vehicle a four by four or something like that you know the moment you're thinking that
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that's the moment the conifers are going to the broadleaf trees okay step aside it's our turn now
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we're going to take it from here let's talk about the shapes of a tree so every tree is different
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they're going to be shaped differently because of the environment they find themselves in
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so what can the shape of a tree tell us about its environment well all trees are a balance of a
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number of factors but two of the biggest factors are the genetic so the nature and then the environment
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the nurture so a pine tree for example will never look like an oak tree whatever whatever goes on in
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the environment so conifers generally speaking tend to be um tall fairly skinny with branches that
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that aren't horizontal they tend to to flow down more and this is very good at dealing with snow
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for example but then what we find is the environment will shape each individual tree
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and one of the core philosophies in the book is no two trees on the whole of planet earth
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are identical so they might start life with an identical genetic package but then day one
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they're experiencing slightly different things and we see that in their shape one of the simplest
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things is is sunlight makes trees shorter and fatter because they don't know what they're going to have
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to deal with in life so their basic plan is to grow up and to grow you know tall and skinny until they find
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some sunlight and then when the top of the tree the what's known as the apical bud senses direct
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sunlight it changes the messages to all the branches in the tree and says okay we can slow the race for the
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sky now and we can start spreading out so the sunnier a place is the shorter and the fatter a tree is so
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if there's a particular type of tree you see a lot of just notice how when you see it surrounded by
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other trees or in other shady places it tends to be tall and skinny and when you see it out on its
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own drenched in sunlight it's shorter and fatter what can the shape of a tree tell us about the weather
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in an environment i think last time we had you on we talked about this like sort of micro climate so
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there's like broad weather patterns but even in a specific area there can be
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different types of weather so what can the shape of a tree tell us about that
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each tree will respond to every day of weather i i sometimes think of both the sun and the wind
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and indeed rain leaving footprints on trees and if if anyone's new to this the wind is a good place to
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start because you know a light breeze is not going to change a tree in a way that will pick up in a
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dramatic sense but if you look in exposed areas on high ground if you're in a town or a city there are
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places where you know the part of the park where a long street leads up to you'll find these gusty winds
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and what you'll find is for example the branches go shorter on the side the winds come from
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and there are patterns here long-term trends so in many parts of the world we get more winds from
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the west or the southwest and we find that that that leaves footprints you'll notice the tops of the
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trees are bent over and indeed every single branch and actually every single leaf can be read in this
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way but when anyone's new to this i recommend you know look for the the really bold dramatic stuff
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go you know whenever you have the opportunity to look at a tree on its own on the top of a hill
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it will just it will scream a direction and it will tell you a whole story about about what the wind has
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been doing to it okay so that's one way a tree can help you navigate so if you're looking at it from
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a long distance away if it looks like one side has shorter branches than the other that's where the wind
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is hitting it and so you know wind typically comes from the west so you can say well that short side
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that's west and then the longer side is east yes absolutely and every single part of the tree is
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responding to that the tree itself will grow shorter in the wind and this leads when you've
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got a a wood that you can see from a little distance so you've got a little bit of perspective
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it leads to something i call the wedge effect and this is where trees grow shorter in the wind so what
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we find is the tree at the windward edge of the wood will be the shortest and then the next tree
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downwind just a couple of steps to the east is getting a little bit of shelter from the first
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tree so it grows a tiny bit taller and this leads to a wedge it's sometimes from a distance looks like
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a sports car driving into the wind and we find there are lots and lots of little little layers that we
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can add so the trees are shorter but they're also denser because the branches are shorter so we find it
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looks much darker on the side of a wood that the wind has come from and this is the sort of thing
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where you might go a couple of days and not see it and then the first time you see it it just screams
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out to you and our brain absolutely loves that so it kind of stores it it goes i like this i like being
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able to find meaning in a simple pattern and that starts a relationship with these signs which which
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all our ancestors had so that's sort of looking at trees overall the shape of a tree but then you start
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getting more specific different things we can look at in a tree to learn more and one of them is the
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branches of a tree what kind of trees branches when you look at them closely what can they tell
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us about the environment and then how can they potentially help us navigate so this is a good
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example of nature and nurture so again the tree doesn't know the world it's growing up in so it
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it has to respond to what it finds and the branches the exact angle they start life will depend on on
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their genes on their species but we don't need to know that but if we imagine branches starting by
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growing let's say 45 degrees up then from day one the growing bud is responding to light so on the south
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side the branches grow out towards the southern sky leading to a more horizontal pattern in the
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branches on the north side of the tree there's no direct sunlight the only light those growing buds
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get is from directly above the blue sky above them and so that leads to branches on the north side that
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grow up towards the sky and seen from the side if you look from the east or west side of a tree it
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sometimes screams out you see these horizontal branches on the south side more vertical branches on the north
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side and it can look like a check and so i nickname it the check effect or in this country we call it
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the tick effect well another one too related to this is this idea of the southern eye and this is
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something you've discovered recently that you kind of discovered it serendipitously when you're out on a
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hike yeah i was exploring a small nature reserve called snitterfield it's in stratford near sort of
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shakespeare country and it was the end of a day's micro exploring and i'm always i'm always looking for
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signs that's what i do that's my job but it's what i do for joy as well and it's been a long fun
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interesting day and i just stopped and and so often stopping it just it just allows our senses and our
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brain to notice things that we've been passing and i was just having a snack and and i just suddenly saw
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the trees looking at me and i thought that's odd and what i was seeing was something that i've i've
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subsequently nicknamed the southern eye but what it is it does look on smoothbark trees and we might come on
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to talk about bark but on smoothbark trees it's more dramatic on rough bark it's a little bit harder
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to make out but you see this this the shape that really does sometimes look exactly like an eye
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and all it is is where a tree has pruned its own branch off so again trees they're not given any
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advanced information they don't know what they're going to grow into so what they do is they put out
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a branch when there's lots of light and then they grow branches higher up and they end up shading
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their own branches or another tree shades them so instead of keeping a branch that's doing no good
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and not harvesting any energy they actually they change the message to that branch they shut it down
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and they seal it off it's almost like closing a gate and that branch will eventually die and fall off
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and it leaves if the process has gone well and there haven't been any sort of fungi problems or anything
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like that you're left with this little scar on the bark and depending on the size of the branch
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the eye it might be very small it might not be much bigger than a coin very often it's it's sort
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of palm sized and the the thing is because you get more branches on the south side because there's
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more light eventually you end up with more branches pruned on the south side so more of these southern
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eyes and the reason i love it is because it's a really good example to me personally where i've spent
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literally decades looking for these sorts of things and yet something which is quite you know it does
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stand out when you know to look for it it'll pass me by for years and years and then as soon as you
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know to look for something it's pretty hard to miss and that's that's a sign i'm onto something when
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it's when it's obvious in hindsight but we can go our whole lives and almost miss it well another
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navigation sign you found on trees it's similar to the southern eye is a trunk shoot compass
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what's a trunk shoot compass yeah so trees have a it's like an emergency plan they have
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a load of branch buds that are dormant and they sit under the bark and we never see them if things
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are going well so the chemical messages that typically are coming from the top of the tree down
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are saying to these dormant buds you just chill out there's no need for you guys to do anything we've
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got this plan a is working and then if the tree experiences a trauma or stress of some kind it might be
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fungi it might be a structural problem it might be a storm basically if the tree senses it is under
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attack and things are going very badly the tree changes the chemical messages and these dormant
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buds which might have sat there for years and years doing nothing suddenly get a different message it's
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like pulling the emergency cord the message is okay you guys now need to spring into action and what
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happens is these buds known as epicormic buds they start to sprout out through the trunk but they
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respond most dynamically to light and again we get more light from the south side so we find these kind of
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really bushy little bunches of branches just poking out of the south side of a tree but it typically
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only happens if that trees experience some trauma but it's it's very common if you walk through through
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any woodland that are particularly if human beings have been doing anything we tend to make life quite
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stressful for trees so you're very likely to spot some okay so if you see those little branch shoots
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from the trunk on that's probably gonna be on the south side that's a navigation tool there let's talk
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about the trunk in general what can the trunk show us about the tree's environment there are some
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things that are really glaring and leap out the simplest sign is the texture of the bark all bark
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is performing the same function so it's quite interesting that we see so many different patterns
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one of the reasons for the different patterns is the different ways the trees grow they have
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different strategies to either grow very fast or just grow slowly and bigger and that changes the
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texture but the simplest sign to look for is rough bark is a sign that that tree is expecting to deal
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with harsh environment and possibly animals so each family of trees specializes in a different area
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so birch trees for example are known as pioneer trees and they're kind of the smash and grab family
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of trees if they see an opportunity so for example if we cleared part of a woodland if you come back in 10
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years there'll be loads of young birch trees there because they scatter millions of seeds in the wind
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and and part of their strategy is just to grab a piece of land and grow super fast to just kind of
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kind of grab it for themselves but because they're expecting to grow up sometimes on their own in quite
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sort of exposed areas they have this very tough bark and that that protects them against the elements
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but also against animals other trees have evolved to specialize in woodland settings and they're much
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more gregarious they're much more social they like to be surrounded by other trees typically of their own
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kind something like a beech tree very smooth bark so the simple sign is rough bark this is a tree that is
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more common in open areas at the edges of woodlands so if we're finding our way from the center of a woods
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out we typically go from smooth bark to rough bark let's talk about those bulges that you might sometimes
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see growing in the middle of a trunk what's going on there what's what causes that we've got different types
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of bulges and it can become a very specialist area so i don't want to give the impression that you can
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diagnose every single thing that's going on for a tree instantly but you get sort of semi-spherical
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swellings technically known as a spheroblast but that's a good example of the tree scientists
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putting a sort of complex sounding word on something that they don't fully understand
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and these buds i mentioned which um sprout out and can give us the trunk shoot compass
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those buds don't always follow a simple plan and for reasons we don't always understand it could be
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viruses or fungi they sometimes the plan goes a bit wrong and it leads to a bit of a bulge but that's
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not always a serious worry for the tree the other types of bulges you get come from structural weaknesses
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so if there's a storm for example and the trunk suffers a crack if the cracks all the way across the
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trunk is most likely to be game over but quite often there'll be a crack which is only partially
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through the trunk and the way the way trees are dealing with these sorts of stresses is to grow
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extra wood so we'll find ribs that are vertical and we'll find bulges and sort of ring shapes and
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things like that the only thing we can say for certain is that the tree has grown some extra wood
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to deal with a challenge identifying exactly what the challenge is can be quite a tall order
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but if you see that you can assume there was some sort of challenge could have been a fungus could
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have been you know something broke or whatever and it's just compensating for that so i think
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that's interesting another interesting thing i learned about trunks from your book
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is the way trees grow let's say you go to a tree and you carve your initials you shouldn't do that
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but let's say you do if you were to come back 20 years later 10 years later i think a lot of people
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think well the carving will be higher but that's not what happens actually the carving stays in the
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same place even though the tree has gotten taller yes it's a very popular misconception about the way
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trees grow and i believe it springs from the way we we sometimes see time lapse videos of you know
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small plants growing from seed and we see them kind of wriggling upwards and of course there has to be
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some upward growth otherwise a small plant never becomes a tall tree but trees have two types of growth
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they have primary growth and that's when the little seedling and the green bud is moving upwards and
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the second a tree forms bark a different type of growth takes place known as secondary growth
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and this is where it gets steadily fatter but it stopped moving up so the top of the tree where the
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bud is will continue that primary growth so at the very top of any tree doesn't matter what family or
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species you're looking at there could be growth going on at the very top where the bud is still
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going on but if you see bark there is no vertical growth at all what's happening is it's getting
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steadily fatter and what this means is if you carve something into it like uh of course i wouldn't
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recommend anybody does that because it does harm the tree but we will come across these markings
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graffiti you know it's it's it's been common for people to do little love messages you know leo for
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gemma and what you'll notice is they're nearly always close to head height because that's the height
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people carve these things and you can sometimes find graffiti from from 50 years ago maybe even 100
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years ago occasionally and you'll notice it hasn't moved upwards because the trunk hasn't
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we're gonna take a quick break for your word from our sponsors
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and now back to the show so you're likely to encounter tree stumps on a hike and those stumps
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can be created from a tree falling down naturally or from being cut down anything that stumps can tell
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us about the environment or help us navigate yeah stumps are a golden opportunity if time allows i
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encourage everybody to pause for at least a minute and just see if you can find a story about that
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tree it's come down for a reason as you say it could be a storm and it's worth just sort of saying
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there that trees typically come down in one of two ways there's what's known as wind throw which is
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when the root ball is torn out of the ground and the tree stays largely intact that can be used to
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navigate because they typically come down in a trend in the direction the storm's gone through in
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but wind snap is when the trunk itself snaps that's very rare unless there's been some weakening like a
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fungus or a disease of some kind but foresters are constantly felling trees and that's where we get
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our cleanest stumps and there we can look for slightly different messages because we get to see
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the rings and a lot of these tree signs would have been known by our ancestors and are indeed known by
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indigenous people to this day one of the few things that is still common knowledge is counting rings to
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age the tree but there are lots and lots of subtleties within that so a lot of people aren't aware for
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example that we only see the rings because there are two types of growth there the early and the late
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growth and they have slightly different colors which is why we see rings but the more interesting
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thing from in my world is that the heart of a tree the very center in terms if you count in from the
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rings you go to the center there the interesting thing is that is not the center by which i mean and
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it sounds illogical but the heart of a tree the middle of the rings the smallest circle if you like
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is very very rarely in the center of that trunk and the reason is there are three major factors that
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will change the pattern in the rings and therefore where we find the heart in the stump so the three
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factors are light wind and gravity so for example a broadleaf tree because broadleaves and conifers
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don't respond to things in exactly the same way but if we just think about a broadleaf tree for now
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more light on the southern side more branches more weight there we end up with the heart slightly
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close to the southern edge but then what we'll find is it's contending with the wind as well
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and that will actually push the heart to the opposite direction to the winds coming from
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and then there's gradient as well i don't want to list all the basically you've got conifers and
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you've got broadleaves and you've got three different factors but the simple truth is the heart is there
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for a reason and what i encourage people to do to keep it sort of straightforward and fun
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early on is the next time you see a freshly or a recently enough cut tree stump on a steep gradient
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just have a look and it's even better which is quite often when foresters are doing lots of work
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it's even better when you can see a half a dozen or a dozen of these stumps in one place you'll start
00:23:15.480
to notice the trend you'll start to go ah yeah i can see for example that the hearts are much much
00:23:20.720
closer to the downhill side of the trunk and once we picked up those patterns they form a compass and
00:23:26.680
help us with our journeys well the other interesting thing about uh tree stumps i didn't know this but
00:23:32.020
i've noticed this but i didn't know what was going on it's this cake slice effect so you're looking at
00:23:37.700
a tree stump and it looks like there's this dark triangle and it looks like a piece of cake has been
00:23:44.040
taken out of the tree stump and like the bulge in a tree trunk that cake slice is just a sign that
00:23:50.240
there's some sort of infection the tree encountered and it was trying to to deal with it and just
00:23:55.480
kind of coordinate off yes one of the clever tactics that a tree has is if it's attacked by
00:24:02.460
something like a fungus even if it can't beat the fungus it can box the fungus in so trees can stop
00:24:10.080
infection moving vertically up and down the trunk they can stop a fungus moving in or out i crossing
00:24:16.600
rings but the one we'll see most often is exactly as you described there is if we imagine the spokes on
00:24:23.720
a wheel we have these kind of radial walls that go from the heart out to the the bark and they can
00:24:30.080
lock an infection into a cake slice and quite often this infection will change the color of the wood
00:24:35.900
so if you find um a sawn tree stump or indeed timber stacked you know dozens of logs in a in a pile
00:24:44.020
just keep an eye out and every so often you'll spot this cake slice i think all of us can probably
00:24:49.100
remember pie charts from school it just looks a bit like one of those kind of slices there it's a
00:24:53.080
different color and that's the tree locking a problem into a compartment what can the roots of
00:24:58.300
a tree tell us about the environment and how can they be used to navigate this is a lovely lovely
00:25:04.820
example for me of where i never ever fall into the trap of thinking that i've discovered all the
00:25:09.880
interesting stuff there is to discover i'd be delighted if somebody told me i'd i'd discovered
00:25:13.960
10 of it but but i'd for many years used one tree technique which i'll i'll discuss in a moment
00:25:20.500
but i'd never noticed this the second one which i'll also share in just a sec so the the first one
00:25:25.960
is roots have two two main roles the first is to supply the tree with water and minerals and the
00:25:31.900
second one is to give the tree structural stability because we can imagine if the trunk just went vertically
00:25:36.680
down into the ground the first strong wind that trunk's going to topple so we have guy roots and these
00:25:42.660
roots very like guy ropes on a tent which anchor the tree against the winds and they will grow bigger
00:25:49.560
stronger and longer on the side that the winds come from now it's tempting to kind of think well
00:25:54.360
that's that's sort of uh interesting but i'm never going to see that because the roots are underground
00:25:57.640
but this is another very popular misconception because the trunk and the roots meld into each other
00:26:04.600
just above the ground so at head height we're definitely looking at the trunk and a couple of feet
00:26:08.720
underground we're definitely thinking of roots but between those two areas the trunk becomes the
00:26:14.340
roots and what that means is they start to flare out and we can see the roots in most tree families
00:26:20.660
above ground particularly close to the trunk and the simplest way to put it is if you look at the
00:26:26.460
pattern of roots around the base of a tree and if it's the first time you're doing it pick some
00:26:30.460
isolated tree that's a bit exposed to to the elements the root that is furthest from the trunk
00:26:35.800
is most likely to be on the windward side so if your winds are coming from the west that is giving
00:26:40.800
you an indication of west and that that's a technique i've been using for natural navigation for
00:26:45.360
well over a decade probably 15 years and something which is so closely related to that but i'd never
00:26:51.160
noticed is that trees are fantastic engineers they've solved so many engineering problems that it took us
00:26:57.600
you know until very recently to work out and something engineers know now is that right angles
00:27:03.160
are not great at dealing with stress that corner creates a weakness so if we imagine the tree went
00:27:08.960
down from a vertical trunk and then turn 90 degrees out to the roots you'd have a right angle and the
00:27:14.500
first strong wind it would create huge stresses there so we end up with this curve from the trunk to the
00:27:19.400
roots and this can be seen from quite a long distance actually so we don't even have to be a few
00:27:24.560
feet away from the tree looking at the roots in the ground you know just above the ground you can
00:27:28.740
actually be you know hundreds of feet even a thousand feet away from a tree and once you're
00:27:32.400
practiced you can see the curve in the base of the trunk it's what i've nicknamed in in the book the
00:27:38.200
elephant's toes if we imagine an elephant's foot we don't expect it to be a perfect cylinder and there
00:27:44.240
are indeed on an elephant's foot there's just a little curve out towards the toes and that little
00:27:48.820
curve is what we see at the base of trees when we practice looking for it let's talk about leaves
00:27:54.040
what can we learn about the environment by looking at the color and shape of either a tree's leaves or
00:27:59.740
needles if it's a conifer yeah i just find it absolutely it's wonderful it's almost miraculous
00:28:06.520
the variety there is in leaves and it's very i found it very instructive for me and i do write
00:28:12.340
about this because i think it's it's a really helpful way of understanding that that there is
00:28:16.000
nothing random in nature nature is super super competitive so the idea that that anything in the
00:28:22.340
natural world just does something because it's decorative or pretty or or different for the sake
00:28:27.960
of it it just that just not how nature works and of course when we think about it we know that
00:28:31.940
but it is kind of tempting to think well of course there's going to be lots of variety but in my world
00:28:36.920
of looking for clues and signs it's all about turning that on its head instead of sort of going well
00:28:41.460
that's just kind of nice and pretty and different and saying what is the reason for the difference and
00:28:46.120
leaves are a fantastic area to experience this because you know on a walk of half an hour we might
00:28:51.680
easily see you know dozens of different leaf shapes and colors and if we say each one of those
00:28:57.120
differences is trying to tell us something so how do we actually find the meaning well we start with
00:29:01.820
the big bold broad pattern so a big broad leaf is looking to harvest loads of light but it's very
00:29:08.920
vulnerable to tough conditions so it suits trees that shed their leaves in the winter you'll find super
00:29:14.100
broad leaves in places where trees are expecting to be in the shade so we only get tall trees and
00:29:19.760
small trees there are very few medium trees because it's a bad strategy but the smaller trees quite
00:29:25.040
often expect to get shaded so they throw out these very broad leaves a broad leaf is telling you this
00:29:29.980
is a tree that's obviously going to shed them but also is expecting lots of shade a point at the end
00:29:34.640
of a leaf a really marked point in broad leaves is telling you you're in a wet area because points
00:29:40.260
are good at channeling rainwater off a leaf rainwater is you know it's weight and stress that a leaf can do
00:29:45.560
without so anything it can do to shed that weight is good news and points at the end at the tips of
00:29:51.620
leaves are a sign you're in a wet area that's why in jungles we find lots and lots of pointed leaves
00:29:56.540
if a tree is expecting to cope with very tough conditions it has to get smaller that's why
00:30:01.600
conifers have needles not broad leaves and every single color is telling us something as well so
00:30:06.800
for example in conifers you know trees love sunlight but sunlight is damaging the radiation and sunlight is
00:30:13.040
very powerful and so so leaves have this dilemma they want the energy from the sunlight but they
00:30:17.920
have to protect themselves so sometimes on conifers you'll see a white or occasionally a blue sheen
00:30:22.880
and that's wax which is protecting the leaves and because there's more sunlight on the south side
00:30:27.960
we get more of a blue or white color on the south side and this you can see this like in a single tree
00:30:34.020
like a tree might have darker green leaves on one side compared to the other yes what what we find is
00:30:41.280
if a tree's leaves are getting enough light then the the signals in the tree are you just keep doing
00:30:47.280
what you're doing if however there are leaves on a branch and there's not enough energy coming back
00:30:52.140
the tree senses this and it changes the signal it changes the message and it changes the leaves from
00:30:57.500
sun leaves to shade leaves which means they get bigger darker because they pump in more chlorophyll
00:31:02.880
and they actually get thinner because they're effectively spreading out and what's happening here is it's a sort
00:31:07.740
of last roll of the dice so the tree is saying to to the leaves look we're going to change you to to shade
00:31:13.760
leaves but you need to really start delivering now if after um you know a season that hasn't worked
00:31:20.160
the tree changes the signal again and it'll start shutting that branch down which leads to the pruning we
00:31:25.960
talked about earlier so all the time trees are reacting to the environment changing from the leaf level
00:31:32.760
and then that in turn leads to branch changes and that's why no two trees are identical
00:31:37.380
when people often depict the seasons like they said draw a picture of the four seasons they usually
00:31:42.720
include a tree you know they'll show what a tree looks like in winter there's no leaves it's bare
00:31:46.960
spring you're starting to see the flowers blossom the leaves come on summer it's just green
00:31:51.020
leaves and then in fall the leaves change colors but you highlight the fact that trees besides those
00:31:56.880
four broad seasons they actually have hidden seasons what are those hidden seasons and what can they tell
00:32:03.060
us about that tree yeah it's a fascinating area because i think as you've highlighted there our busy
00:32:11.040
modern lives mean we tend to compartmentalize everything to simplify it which can be very helpful
00:32:16.420
but when we're reading trees we're talking about just going up a level and wanting to notice things
00:32:21.120
that have passed us by and that's where four seasons is an oversimplification so if we take spring
00:32:26.820
for example spring doesn't hit one country all at the same time we know that it won't even hit one
00:32:32.740
region at the same time so spring moves across a region but it also moves across trees so one of the
00:32:39.580
most dramatic signs you can look for is how spring starts low and moves up you'll find that there are
00:32:45.300
flowers on the ground wildflowers that come out before any of the trees come into leaf because they're
00:32:50.500
trying to steal a march they're trying to get they're trying to jump the gun almost but the smallest trees
00:32:55.540
and the lowest branches will come into leaf next and then spring moves upwards so by the time most
00:33:01.440
people are walking around going oh it's spring the the leaves are out actually we've seen two two
00:33:07.120
springs already and there are there are you know half a dozen other ones that we can see so in each
00:33:13.340
individual tree the tree is sensing the seasons in all of its growing areas so it can actually tell that
00:33:20.100
it's going to be colder near the ground because of a frost and respond to that differently so we can
00:33:25.000
actually see the seasons move almost branch by branch up a tree at the other end of the the
00:33:30.740
broadleaf growing season we we have fall and again we we sort of get used to this idea that there's this
00:33:37.420
sort of magical moment or maybe a magical two weeks where there are fantastic golden colors and reds and
00:33:42.680
things like this but actually each tree again is it's not interesting putting on a show for us
00:33:48.220
lovely when it happens but that's not the tree's aim the tree's aim is to be efficient and do things in a
00:33:53.500
practical way so what we find is that the leaves will turn at the furthest point from the roots so
00:33:59.320
the highest part of the tree but also in the warmest areas first so we find that the colors will start in
00:34:06.420
the highest southern part of a tree so it's very very common to notice fall arriving in the high
00:34:12.500
southern part of a tree weeks before in a big tree you know a couple of weeks maybe three weeks before
00:34:18.000
the low northern part of the very same tree how does a tree figure out when it needs to start
00:34:23.420
blossoming in the spring and when it needs to start shedding its leaves during the fall like what
00:34:28.580
is it looking at in the environment to figure that out the tree senses two different things it senses
00:34:34.440
the length of night we tend to think of the day as getting longer but the tree's looking at it a
00:34:38.740
different way that shorter the night the closer to the growing season the tree gets so that's the
00:34:44.380
astronomical cue and that will be the same every single year you know pretty much to within a few
00:34:50.120
hours so the tree could just base itself on the length of night and that would mean that the leaves
00:34:54.860
came out on the same day every single year which would be a tiny bit boring but it would work in one
00:35:00.000
sense but the problem is we know that spring is a tough season to call the way i put it is you know
00:35:06.240
for anybody who's ever organized an outdoor event in april we know that this is a this is a tricky thing
00:35:11.700
to call so trees could take the safety first strategy and say okay i'm just not going to put
00:35:16.780
any leaves out until the risk of frost is completely gone so let's just wait till the first of june for
00:35:21.440
example the problem then is they've lost the competition because trees that go earlier will
00:35:25.660
get lots and lots of lovely warmth and light so what trees do is they count warm hours so they're
00:35:31.560
aware of the length of night but they're also counting warm hours and this is how trees sense that winter
00:35:37.460
has been they count cold hours and then when the number of warm hours reaches a certain number
00:35:42.980
and in commercially valuable uh crops like peach for example the the science is amazing uh we know
00:35:48.960
almost to exactly to the hour how many uh hours for example a a peach cultivar like like mayflower or
00:35:55.600
something like that will need so it needs the night to get to a certain certain length shorter than a
00:36:00.900
certain number of hours and it needs x thousand hours of warmth and then it just goes right it's spring
00:36:06.380
let's get this show on but then as we've discussed it it won't do it all over the tree at exactly the
00:36:11.100
same moment that's when it starts the process in the warmest part of the tree and it'll move over
00:36:15.520
the rest of it so we we've talked about some of the signs we can look for in trees and there's lots
00:36:20.880
more in the book but i'm curious someone is listening to this episode and they want to start
00:36:24.740
reading trees like right now they walk out their door and take a walk in their neighborhood
00:36:28.880
what are like three or four things that you think are easy to start noticing and how to read a tree and
00:36:34.320
looking for signs on how to navigate the three areas i'd encourage people to look for are water
00:36:40.400
sun and wind and depending where you are in the world one or two of those you know you might get
00:36:45.440
to almost immediately but whenever you're standing anywhere near water it doesn't need to be a vast
00:36:51.220
amount of water it can be a small pond or lake if there happens to be a tree next to it just start to
00:36:56.240
notice and again we don't need the names it's fantastic that we've barely mentioned a species name
00:37:01.100
in our chat so just notice what the trees look like there and then the next time you're well
00:37:05.180
away from water just look at the trees there and if you do that a few times you're starting the
00:37:09.680
simplest practical end of map making using trees indigenous people would find it hilarious the idea
00:37:15.700
that that we find water by looking for water the trees will tell us where water is all trees are
00:37:20.680
sensitive to water so so we get things like willows close to water and lots of dry soil loving trees
00:37:25.860
further away from that but the next thing to look for is the sun changing the shape of trees so so
00:37:32.160
notice how no tree is symmetrical every single tree on planet earth of all the billions of trees there
00:37:37.420
is not one symmetrical one and just start to notice how the light is changing the patterns we get more
00:37:42.360
branches on the south side and they're slightly closer to horizontal in the broadleaf trees and
00:37:46.960
then look for wind patterns notice how trees in windy places are shorter but look at how the very top part
00:37:52.820
of the tree will quite often be bent over by any strong winds uh giving you a compass so water sun
00:37:58.840
and wind really really sort of good place to start look for those footprints and that will get you up
00:38:03.660
and running i've been looking for the uh southern eye that's the thing i've been focusing on when i'm
00:38:08.360
out in my sort of in a wooded area and yeah you see them it's interesting like sometimes they're
00:38:12.620
really small sometimes they're really big but they're there it's really cool once you once you notice
00:38:16.400
it well tristan this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about the book
00:38:20.220
and your work thanks how to read a tree can be ordered through all the usual places and i love
00:38:26.100
it when people support their local bookstore if that's an option for information my website natural
00:38:30.660
navigator.com has lots and lots of examples you can get a real taste for the signs you can find in
00:38:36.660
trees and indeed in nature tons and tons of information on there so uh yeah natural navigator.com
00:38:42.740
will give you lots of fun info all right well tristan gouley thanks for time it's been a pleasure
00:38:46.520
thanks so much brett really enjoyed our chat my guest today was tristan gouley he's the author of
00:38:51.880
the book how to read a tree it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find
00:38:55.780
more information about his work at his website natural navigator.com also check out our show notes
00:39:00.220
at aom.is read a tree where you find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic
00:39:04.780
well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at
00:39:16.100
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00:39:20.340
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