Plants and trees and flowers Page 1 of 2

How on earth do trees support themselves. No idea , but trees don’t just pounce out of the ground willy-nilly. Do plants and trees and flowers know what they are doing. I don’t mean that they themselves know , but am thinking in the same vain of does even our body know what it is doing to have a heart and lungs etc. We ourselves , that is the we in us , that we think that we are, doesn’t make the heart and lungs and so the actual tree most likely doesn’t make all of it’s parts like roots and leaves either.

But in some sense the tree would have to have known before it itself existed that there was now available at some point millions of years ago , air with carbon in it that it could use to become a physical wooden tree. That in simplicity , we could say , is two phenomenas. That is , the air with carbon in it and a tree. Would evolution have a role in either.

So from there , to exist , trees surely didn’t have to fathom it all out by relying on something like our evolution idea. Compare it to like some human structural engineer putting a garden fence into the ground that can stay standing up in all sorts of weather. Imagine the mathematics to have a root system that even if it knew what soil was and how heavy soil was , it would have to come up with the exact tanglyness to support itself. Stand next to a tree and you can feel the enormity of its strength. It could perhaps support the weight of two trees. Once again though in the main , our conjecture of random mutations and natural selection seems futile to explain the existence and success of trees. It just seems like the tree is ensured to have the ability to support itself.

When we look at trees we might try to imagine how they evolved since they at one time did not exist. If we used random mutations and natural selection to explain them then there would have been a time when the trees had reached a certain height and because of their weight some would have toppled over. Then natural selection would allow the trees that didn’t topple over to go on and produce more trees that didn’t fall over. There would have been a point at which a tree could grow no taller. Different types of trees seem to know how far down their roots can go down in the soil that they are in to be able to take water and nutrients all the way up the trunk. That is a process. So as well as having a process and arranging the leaves to soak up the sunlight and a million other things, we surely cannot be satisfied that random mutations and natural selection is responsible for any of that.

This newly emerging maple tree has an arrangement of equally spaced branches and leaves. Again , surely natural selection has nothing to do with that spacing. Those branches each go in opposite directions to the branches above or below .Hard to think how evolution theory explains that spacing and it’s eventual hundred feet height. Since this picture it has grown lots of other branches in between the lowest and highest ones.

What’s quite remarkable though , is that the seed that started it all is gone. What does that mean. Don’t know. But the seed is gone and the tree still grows. Given the right conditions , this young tree will continue to grow without the seed that started it all.

There is a sort of dichotomy of thought that we can have about say just the spacing of the stems that grow into thick branches that spread out on the tree. Firstly would be that the tree somehow has natural selection on it’s side to get that spacing right. Second thought would be that the tree does that stem spacing and doesn’t rely on natural selection at all.
It just feels more likely that any tree that can soak up carbon from the air to make itself and get that spacing right, would surely be more in charge to evolve, if it ever did evolve . The tree takes carbon from the air to make itself and then makes seeds that make more of itself.
Take the acorn that the oak tree produces that can grow into another oak tree. The acorn has the ability to turn into an oak tree. The weakest conjecture out of the dichotomy would be that the acorn evolved using random mutations and natural selection. Just to reiterate , there is absolutely no evidence that the oak tree and its acorns evolved to be what they are. It’s all conjecture that the existence of any tree and it’s seeds evolved. Maybe it is because we see that a tree does physically grow , that our thinking allows the thought that a tree and it’s seed evolved in a similar way to be ability to physically grow.

Just on the whole tree , you’d firstly have to have the unphysical phenomena of a tree. Why then would the physical tree that comes about need evolution when the tree has come about because of the unphysical phenomena of itself. Take just the leaves. The leaves that are on the tree take the carbon from the air. It’s hard to think that the leaves were brought about by evolution. It would follow that evolution doesn’t make leaves and that evolution also doesn’t make the tree trunk and evolution also doesn’t make the roots either. Our evolution theory is about natural selection acting on random mutations in the physical tree , but somehow that conjecture leaves in our thoughts that the tree came from something less evolved than it is today.

Back on just the trees supporting themselves though. It might though be more of a balancing act for them to be supported. If the bottom of the main trunk is bearing down on the soil and that soil takes most of the weight , then any tilt in the tree is pressing down on the roots that stops it moving left or right , very much like a tightrope walker trapeze artist walking on a piece of rope. But not quite.

Surprisingly , tree roots don’t go deep into the earth, like i myself first had imagined. They seem to have some that go say six feet under the main trunk but most of them spread out sideways after say one to six feet and they they can extend wider than the width of the whole tree in all directions. They seem to know that it is futile to go too deep as they will eventually meet rocks or more dense soil. Of course though , the roots that go deepest would just meet the rocks and spread out , but the higher roots do spread out before they meet any real resistance.
We could think that all of this happening is down to the seed that started the new tree , and could think that the seed has in it a plan to make the whole tree. It might. But , the seed would have to have some bizarre property in it to be able to pass on to the whole tree how to develop itself as it is growing amongst other trees. Apart from anything else , the seed itself would have to have somehow formed to do what it does. How can that be thought of. Could a tree itself form seeds to turn into more trees. No idea. But they do come about somehow , and a simple bit of thinking lets us know that the phenomena and physicality of a seed that is produced by the tree would not rely on a developing process like our evolution idea. There would have to be the evolving of the evolving to make tree seeds that turn into trees that have seeds that turn into more trees.

It’s a wonder how say in a forest all the trees seem to get on with each other. They can be very close to each other. Their roots must mingle or move around each others roots. There is of course some distance between the trees. It’s a bit like the birds you see on the top of those high street lights where they have a six foot arms out structure at the top with the lights on either side. The birds are always evenly spaced. Then when another bird joins them one of the other birds flies away. They are obviously spaced out that way to be able to fly away and not knock into each other on take off.
Obviously with the trees though they are too subjected by space , and and those that do manage to grow , grow to a whole. So even in a dense forest they become a whole tree even if their branches mingle a bit with other trees. And their branches do mingle a bit , but not much , and on a close look it is obvious that they don’t grow too much across each others space and push each other over. That is what is bizarre to see.
How does a seed give the tree that it grows into , a sort of intuition of how to be successful and do the following.

There is just no tree on earth that can be seen to have a thick branch that grows towards and into another tree and pushes the other tree over. It doesn’t happen. Branches on a tree can be seen to move towards another tree but then grow upwards or even around to avoid such happenings. That might be a case of the branch chasing the sunlight , but however it happens , without it happening , there would be chaos.

What’s odd about it is though , is that the sunlight can’t be the main reason for it. It’s almost like the very presence of one tree being next to another tree changes the behaviour of both trees. One tree can have branches on all of it’s sides, but a tree next to that tree can have no branches on it’s side that faces the other tree and it can be seen everywhere. What is striking about it , is that the tree with no branches on it’s side that faces the other tree has not even attempted to grow branches on that side. (ok , maybe stretching it a bit. Not sure if this tree below on the right has had it’s branches cut off on it’s left side and the tree on the left has had it’s branches cut off on the right)

But in the main , trees never collide into each other. Nothing fails. Trees just don’t fail. Of course though almost all seeds don’t get to fully grow , but the available space that exists gets occupied by those that do.
If the initial seed has in it some sort of instructions , those instructions would have to contain instructions on how not to collide into another nearby tree , especially of the same species. But instructions are our only our way of explaining what might be happening and that has us thinking that the seed has a plan or a manual in it.
Could they though , possess something else that makes them behave the way that they do.
It wouldn’t have to be a consciousness like we consider exists in us and other animals , but something in similarity that perhaps doesn’t experience pain.
It’s either something like that or the seed really does on it’s own have in it everything to become a tree. Taking the latter , it would mean that the tree doesn’t know that it itself is a tree and therefore has no knowledge of it’s own existence and just grows because of whatever was in it’s seed. That might be likely to be the case , but that also means that they have nothing to do with themselves. I suppose though that we also don’t have anything to do with ourselves , but we do think that we move ourselves.
It is though , in the world of conjecture , possible to have at least a little thought that trees could be growing themselves. That is , the trunk and the branches do self position themselves.
Without sounding too flowery about it , the tree exists. How does it sort of choose not to grow branches on any side all over the sides. You’d think that it might try , but it doesn’t. It’s almost like a tree seems to know about it’s tree neighbours and doesn’t waste energy growing branches that would collide into the other tree next to it. It’s hard to think up a natural order of nature using only sunlight and water and soil that ensures that happening.
It’s also noticeable that all of the branches on a tree don’t bump into or grow towards other branches of their own tree. We might just think that that’s what trees do , but it seems that a branch on a branch seems to sprouts out in a direction in which it won’t knock into another branch , or it moves that way and then diverts. That can be seen where a branch for some reason has gone awkwardly in some direction , maybe from an earlier weather event like snow , but then seems to right itself effortlessly being careful not to clash into other branches.
Not only that , the trunk and the branches get thinner towards their ends , which is a bid odd , as it is the leaves at the end of them that take the carbon from the air that makes them. Obviously branches would just snap under their own weight if they grew with the same thickness all the way to the end of them. That would mean though that somehow the tree distributes the carbon to give itself the structure it needs to stand up. That’s quite something to do.
Even if all of the instructions are in someway in the seed and there is nothing else , we , as we are trying to work out what is going on , would have to wonder what is in the seed that makes the tree branches gain the space that they do without having anything else apart from what is in the seed. Of course there might be things in the seed that we can’t see , like we can’t see the consciousness in our beginnings.
But surely that success doesn’t rely on on evolutionary process.

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