Margaret Cheasebro

Could there have been giant trees on earth, say, about 400 million years ago? No one is totally sure. There has been lots of speculation about Prototaxites (pro-toh-tax-eye-tees) fossils found on Schunnemunk Mountain in New York's Hudson Valley region.

Scientists found the fossils in 1843. They didn't know what they could be. At first, they thought the fossils came from cone-bearing plants. The shape looked like a hunk of wood. But researchers discovered the fossil spires weren't made of wood. For over 150 years, there were all kinds of theories about what the fossils could have been. Algae, fungi, lichens, something else?

What was confusing was that the fossils were almost 29 feet tall. How could algae, lichen or fungi be that tall?

A Smithsonian article published in 2013 and updated in January 2025, discussed a 2007 study of the fossils by Kevin Boyce, Francis Hueber and others. They used chemical analysis to examine the ratio of two carbon isotopes (carbon-12 and carbon-13) in fossil Prototaxites samples. If the organisms were plants, then the ratios of those two carbon isotopes would be the same as plants that existed during that ancient time. To see the article, go to https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/giant-mysterious-spires-ruled-the-earth-long-before-trees-did-what-exactly-are-these-odd-looking-fossils-13709647/

The results didn't agree with the plant theory. The ratio of the two carbon isotopes was quite different from other plants. Instead, they were more like fungi. Could they have been giant mushrooms? Maybe, but they didn't look anything like mushrooms on earth today.

The test results didn't convince some researchers, who came up with other theories of what the fossils might be. Boyce and others were convinced the fungus theory was the most likely.

The Prototaxites fossils may not have been trees. Even so, discoveries around the globe from present-day Scotland to the American Southwest point to the possibility that ancient trees may have grown on earth sometime during the late Paleozoic era, 542-251 million years ago, and the early Mesozoic era, 252-201 million years ago. Fossils indicate the trees would have been a whole lot bigger than today's California redwoods.

Modern paleobotanical research techniques, such as 3D imaging and isotopic analysis, have helped researchers reconstruct things such as the fossils' anatomy and growth patterns. Even so, some researchers aren't sure what the fossils found in those areas could be. Norse mythology and Native American folklore both talk about colossal trees. To learn more, read Alexander Clark's article, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/scientists-find-evidence-earth-once-had-giant-trees/ar-AA1LfW8M?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U5318cvid=68c56d077a024311ad684c61a2b9f708&ei=33

The discovery of fossils that go back so many millions of years leave researchers and scientists with more questions than answers. But as more studies of the pre-historic fossils reveal additional information, the results could help us better understand our planet's history.

One of the world's tallest and oldest Douglas Fir trees caught on fire in Oregon on August 16, 2025. Federal, state and local agencies worked to extinguish the fire. Some of the heroes to save the tree were firefighters, volunteer tree climbers, and helicopter pilots. The Coos Fire Protective Association and the Bureau of Land Management led the firefighting efforts. The BLM is the federal agency that manages the tree and its surroundings. Oregon Tree Care in Oregon City was among others to assist.

Finally, after almost a week the fire was extinguished. The tree, however, may no longer be one of the tallest Douglas firs in the world. About 50 feet of its top was lost to the fire and to pieces of the tree falling out. Before the fire, it had been recognized as the tallest measured Douglas fir and the tallest non-redwood tree in the Americas.

Known as the Doerner Fir, once called the Brummit Fir, it is estimated to be over 450 years old. It stood 325 feet tall before the fire and is 11 ½ feet in diameter. The tree is located in the Southern Oregon Coast Range mountains about 50 miles from Coos Bay.

Cause of the fire is not known. So far, investigators have ruled out a lightning strike after analyzing six weeks of weather data. Because the Doerner Fir was the only tree burning in the area, authorities suspect the fire may have been intentionally set, but evidence gathering continues.

The tree contained lots of dried moss, bark that had built up over the summer, and a lot of oozing pitch. All those conditions could have made the tree more flammable.

Helicopters dropped buckets of water on the fir. Sprinklers and containment lines were placed around its base. Three days after the fire was discovered, an infrared drone found no flames but detected heat from high up in the tree's cavity.

That's when volunteer tree climbers got involved. On August 21, they climbed the tree and used a hose to put out the remaining fire. They also helped to install a sprinkler system in an attempt to prevent future fire damage to the famous fir.

The tree remains alive and may live many more years, thanks to the efforts of lots of caring people.

Recently, I was driving on Mickey Drive in Farmington, NM, and spotted a mulberry tree that looked healthy in spots and almost dead in others. It captured my attention, so I took a picture of it.

The tree appeared to be struggling to stay alive and healthy. I wondered what message it would have for us if it could speak in a way we can understand. While I pondered this, I began to breathe deeply several times. Could the tree be encouraging me to be more conscious about taking deep breaths?

It may seem hard to grasp that a tree could communicate with people. Thomas Berry thought it was possible. He was a Catholic priest, cultural historian, historian of the Earth and its evolutionary processes, and scholar of the world's religions. He wrote many books related to those themes. He was born in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1914 and died in 2009 at the age of 94, also in Greensboro.

His obituary in the National Catholic Reporter stated that Berry "was among the first to say the earth crisis is fundamentally a spiritual crisis."

Victoria Loorz wrote about some of his beliefs in her book, Church of the Wild: How Nature Invites Us into the Sacred published in 2021 by Broadleaf Books, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

On page 90 of her book, Loorz wrote, "Berry suggested that restoring conversation with the rivers and deer and trees can actually repair the world. I don't think he was talking metaphorically – at least not completely. I think he was speaking to the inherent capacity we, as beings on Earth, have to actually engage in a conversation deeper than words, one which is going on all the time. And that conversation is what actually holds the web of life together."

Loorz noted that Berry was saddened by the loss we as humans and the entire world have suffered because we are no longer hearing and respecting each other's voices. "We are talking only to ourselves," she wrote, quoting Berry. "We are not talking to the rivers, we are not listening to the wind and stars. We have broken the great conversation."

That conversation is still available to us. All it takes is a willingness to listen to nature around us, to suspend the misconception that such communication cannot take place.

On age 89 on her book, Loorz affirmed this. "The skies, the waters, the deer, the forests: these are speaking all the time. We may have forgotten that we have the capacity to understand their voices and to speak with them, ask their advice, and seek their wisdom."

I am grateful for the mulberry tree's encouragement for me to breathe more deeply. In spite of its struggles to maintain health, it is willing to share its wisdom with any of us who will listen.

Tree roots are a source of inspiration to me right now. When they sense moisture nearby, their roots stretch to absorb the moisture they need.

It's often an effort for tree roots to reach for those underground water sources. The tree trunks themselves don't move, but their roots do spread to find needed nourishment. Those roots push through the earth until they get where they need to go. Then they transfer the moisture upwards into the tree trunk, which takes it on up into the branches and leaves.

Sometimes things don't go quite so well. Occasionally tree roots find their way into wells and plumbing pipes. They don't always recognize they're causing problems as they hunt for the water they need.

A retired man and his wife, who live near me, had to cut down a tree that had been in their front yard for decades because the roots kept growing into their plumbing. More than once, they were faced with costly repair bills. They finally decided the tree had to go. It took a long time to remove the tree and its roots, but they finally succeeded. Though they miss the tree, they don't miss those mounting repair costs.

Sometimes we're a little like trees. We sense the need to stretch our boundaries, change jobs, make different friends, or even move to a different city, state or country.  If we don't take the time to plan ahead and weigh the complications against the opportunities, we can make choices that hurt rather than help us.

Tree roots remind me to be open to needed change while weighing all the factors that the change could bring. Once I've thought things through carefully, then I can make a wiser decision about what to do.

Trees are amazing teachers.

Many of us learned that we should not seek shelter from lightning under a tree. Trees stand taller than many other structures and can end up acting as lightning rods.

So I was surprised to learn about a research study led by Evan Gora, a forest ecologist at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. The study focused on how lightning impacts biodiversity and carbon storage in Panama's tropical forests. Cary Institute, located in Millbrook, New York, is an independent, not-for-profit environmental research organization that studies the world's ecosystems and the natural and human factors that influence them.

In 2015, while working in Panama, Bora and his colleagues, came across Dipteryx oleifera, a tropical tree, that survived a lightning strike with little damage even though the strike killed 78 percent of the parasitic vines, known as lianas, growing in it. It also killed more than a dozen different kinds of neighboring trees. D. oleifera trees are also called eboe, choibá, tonka bean, or almendro trees.

During their research, Gora and his team discovered other D. oleifera trees that also thrived after being hit by lightning. So they studied the trees more closely. They are an important species in Panamanian forests. Their fruits and seeds provide crucial food sources for some rainforest mammals, especially during the dry season. They are quite tall and have a wide canopy.

The results of their research was published in the May 2025 issue of New Phytologist. You can find it at https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/nph.70062

Though scientists had thought some trees tolerated lightning better than others, there was little evidence for it. Gora and his team changed that by demonstrating that some trees indeed do survive lightning strikes better than others. In fact, they can benefit from the electric strikes.

Gora and his colleagues used a unique lightning system to track 93 trees that had been struck by lightning in Barro Colorado Nature Monument in central Panama. For two to six years after the lightning strikes, the team carefully measured the trees, their crown and trunk condition, and their survival rates. They also noted the number of lianas and neighboring trees that had died as a result of the lightning strikes. Nine of those trees were D. oleiferas, all of which survived the direct lightning strikes with little or no damage. However, 64 percent of the other trees in the study died within two years.

D. oleifera are estimated to live for hundreds, maybe more than a thousand years and may be directly struck by lightning every 56 years. However, during the study, Gora and his team found one D. oleifera that had been hit twice in five years. Because the trees have such a tolerance for lightning strikes, they are 14 times better at producing offspring than other tree species. The team's next goal is to find out what electrical or structural traits help these trees survive lightning strikes so well.

If you're looking for an interesting place to visit and to enjoy seeing ancient Bristlecone pine trees, one destination could be Great Basin National Park in eastern Nevada. It's one of the less visited national parks but quite scenic.

Bristlecone pines can live very long lives. Some have been found to be almost 5,000 years old. Of the pine's three species, pinus longaeva is one of the longest-lived life forms on Earth. The trees are commonly known as Great Basin bristlecone pines. They can be found in Utah, Nevada and Eastern California. Great Basin National Park is a good place to see pinus longaeva trees.

The trees often look twisted and gnarled, and their wood is very strong. They grow slowly and often do well with little or no rainfall in rocky soils that are alkaline, high in calcium and magnesium and low in phosphorus. They thrive in harsh environments. Their branched shallow root system makes them very drought tolerant.

One reason bristlecones live so long is because of the proportion of dead wood to live wood in a tree. That helps to reduce the tree's respiration and water loss. They grow so slowly because of the environment in which they thrive. They do well in cold temperatures with dry soil, high winds and slow growing seasons, according to Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia.

Dendroclimatologists like to study the trees because their great age gives clues about variations in past climates. Analyzing tree rings and wood properties helps climatologists discover environmental factors such as temperature and precipitation that affect the trees' growth.

If you want to see bristlecone pines other than the pinus longaeva, you can find Rocky Mountain bristlecone pines (pinus aristata) in Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. Foxtail pines (pinus balfouriana) can be found in the Klamath Mountains and the southern Sierra Nevadas. Some specimens of both the pinus aristata and pinus balfouriana have been estimated to live up to 3,000 years, but neither is as ancient as the pinus longaeva. Unfortunately, the Rocky Mountain bristlecone population is threatened by white pine blister rust, a fungal disease, and by mountain pine beetles.

If you decide to visit Great Basin National Park, you can take US Route 93 north from Las Vegas, Nevada, and stop at several interesting places along the way, among them the Alien Research Center and Area 51, which is known for all kinds of conspiracy theories. It's about a 285-mile drive from Las Vegas to Great Basin National Park, according to an article in the July/August/September 2025 issue of AAA Explorer. A good time to go is from late May to October, the only time the Wheeler Peak Scenic Drive to the bristlecone trail head is open, depending on snowfall. Wheeler Park Scenic Drive is pretty high up, about 10,000 feet above sea level. Check with Great Basin National Park at 775-234-7331 for details.

A unique European Space Agency satellite called Biomass was launched on April 29 to help understand what is happening in many different areas of the world, including how much carbon is stored in forests and other vegetation.

During the Living Planet Symposium in Vienna, Austria on June 23, the first images taken from the satellite with its P-band synthetic aperture radar were revealed.

The radar tool measures the biomass of forests beneath the trees' canopy, making it easier to measure a forest's biomass and carbon content.  It also measures subtle terrain and vegetation differences, exposes the contours of volcanoes, and reveals structures such as ancient riverbeds and geologic formations up to five meters (or about 16.4 feet) below the surface.

It penetrates below glacier ice to determine the dynamics and stability of ice sheets, which helps scientists understand future sea-level rise in our warming world.

The satellite's mission is designed for five years. According to a June 23rd article written by Daisy Dobrijevic in space.com, "Biomass will provide consistent, global coverage of Earth's forested regions, contributing vital data for climate models, conservation efforts, and carbon accounting."

Michael Fehringer, ESA's Biomass Project Manager, called the images revealed during the symposium spectacular. "As is routine," he said in a statement, "we're still in the commissioning phase, fine-tuning the satellite to ensure it delivers the highest quality data for scientists to accurately determine how much carbon is stored in the world's forests."

Pictures of tropical forests and the free-flowing, undammed Beni River in Bolivia show different colors that highlight ecosystems, including green for rainforest, red for forested wetlands and floodplains, and blue-purple for grasslands.

In the northern Amazon rainforest in Brazil, images showed red and pink tones that indicated forested wetlands and floodplains. Green tones showed dense forests.

Images of Halmahera's volcanic rainforests in Indonesia captured the complex topography shaped by volcanic forces. Images in Gabon of the forests and the Invindo River revealed the river and its tributaries in a green background that represents unbroken rainforest.

The colorful images unlock all kinds of details that help scientists understand the state of the planet's health and its forests.

To see some of the images generated by the Biomass satellite, go https://www.space.com/astronomy/earth/nothing-short-of-spectacular-esas-biomass-satellite-releases-1st-views-of-earth-from-orbit-photos

When I approach the door to the San Juan College fitness center in Farmington, NM, where I walk the indoor track, beautiful vegetation lines both sides of the wide cement sidewalk. There is an array of colorful flowers as well as several young trees.

They are desert olives a small tree native to the Southwestern United States. It takes maybe five or six years for the trees to produce fruit, clusters of purple-black drupes that are edible for humans but taste kind of bitter. Because the wood is light, tough and flexible, some people like to use it to build furniture and make crafts.

When I walk by the desert olive trees on my way to the fitness center, I enjoy noticing their small light green leaves. They reflect the sunlight and create almost a lacy view of the buildings and landscape behind them. These young trees don't have berries yet. They'll need to grow a few more years first.

I've been told that if you decide to taste a berry, be prepared to pucker up. They can be pretty bitter. Some people say if you eat several berries at the same time, their bitter taste isn't so overpowering. I'm not sure I'd want to be that adventurous. What's a little bitter to some might make me take huge gulps of water to drown out the taste.

If you decide to plant a desert olive tree in your yard, choose a sunny spot. They like at least half a day of direct sunlight. Though they can handle shade, desert olive trees really do like the sun.

For me, I'm just happy to enjoy walking by the young desert olive trees on my way to the college fitness center. I enjoy them again after I've walked a mile or two on the indoor track and head back to my car, tired, sweaty and thankful for the shade the trees provide.

Over the years, film maker and artist Joshua Bonnetta has made sonic records of places that had meaning for him. They were private mementos for him.

As he learned more about long-form field recording, he decided to document a pine tree in Tioga County, New York, for 8,760 hours, a total of 365 days from May 2021 to April 2022. The recording captured, among other things, the sounds of crickets and frogs, the tree's creaking branches, and even a raccoon.

With the help of Holger Klinck, an expert in conservation bioacoustics at Cornell University, he was able to use spectral analysis software to identify sounds graphically. Another friend, Josh Berger, introduced him to a program that helped him to clean up the sound as well as dismantle the sounds and put them back together.

It took Bonnetta three years between other jobs to create what he calls The Pines, a spectral collage of four hours of sounds that document a year in the life of the tree and its natural surroundings. An essay by Robert Macfarlane accompanies it. The Pines is out now on Shelter Press and The Dim Coast.

The Pines contains Bonnetta's amazing accomplishment of documenting the tree and its surroundings in the best way he could. No other year in the life of that tree will ever be the same. Bonnetta has, in essence, captured and immortalized sounds that are unique to that year.

To learn more about Bonnetta and his projects, read Claire Biddle's article, "Trunk call: Artist who spent a year listening to a tree," in the May 9, 2025 issue of The Guardian Weekly.

Bonnetta's next project is to document the inner geological sounds of the Alps. Currently, he lives in Munich, and the sounds of his new city fascinate him. Perhaps one of these days he will capture and immortalize them as well.

The ancient Romans invented a way to grow fruit trees flat against a supportive structure.

During the Renaissance in Europe it evolved into an art form. It allowed the production of large quantities of fruit in smaller spaces. Eventually, the technique became an art form. Trees grown with the espalier method became living sculptures. Many ornamental trees and plants were also grown using the espalier method to create works of art.

Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States of America, used the technique at his Monticello estate to grow fruit trees. He was an innovator in agriculture. His use of the method helped introduce espalier to the United States.

Now it is being used at San Juan College in Farmington, New Mexico. When I attended the Four Corners Harmony barbershop show May 17 on the San Juan College campus at the Connie Gotsch Theatre, I noticed a distinctive looking small apple tree growing against a wall by the parking lot. It looked like it had wooden trellises supporting the branches that made them grow in a straight line. I thought the tree might have been injured and needed extra support, but that wasn't the case.

San Juan College Grounds Supervisor Aiessa W. Thomas told me more about the method. "We are using an Espalier system to grow trees along the wall," she said. "This is a decorative and functional system that allows us to save space, ease of harvest and easier maintenance. We would normally grow these along trellis wires, but we have yet to get our little project finished so we are just using small wood trellises for now."

Some of the benefits of the espalier method are space efficiency, increased sunlight and airflow, ease of harvesting and maintenance, aesthetic appeal, and enhanced productivity.

Among the most popular tree choices for using the method are apple, pear, fig, and citrus. Climbing vines or roses also respond well to the method.

If you use the technique, it's important to install a support system such as wires or trellises and to make the structure strong enough to hold the weight of the tree or ornamental plant once it is fully grown. Add soft ties to the branches as it grows so they will create the pattern you want. Check them often to be sure they are growing in the right direction. Regularly prune them to maintain the shape and structure you want.

To learn more about this method, one helpful book is Espalier Fruit Trees for Wall, Hedge, and Pergola: Installation, Shaping, Care by Karl Pieber.

For more information on how to use the espalier method, go to https://deepgreenpermaculture.com/2009/09/29/espalier-supporttrellis/