Plants and trees and flowers page 2 of 2

Occasionally though , things do get a bit complicated.

Not sure if these two trees above in Redditch UK are aware of the lamppost.
Would presume that the wall below came before this tree in Warwickshire.

It’s very odd to think that trees are made of the environment in which they exist. Animals are also made of their environment too , but It’s different to wondering in a similar way about how an animal that has arms or legs that just grow in their place on the body that they do , compared to how the branches on a tree grow.
If trees didn’t in someway know how to grow , they would be a complete tangly mess. In other words , trees don’t seem to be totally relying on only an instruction laid out by the seed that starts them in the way that an animal body seems to do.
The two arms on the side of a human are going to be there , in their positions before they are there , but a trees branches occur in different configurations and numbers of them , and appear to be more dependant on what is around them.
A tree also doesn’t seem to form itself in the way that it does just because of soil and sun and rain and air and gravity alone. It does need them all , and is made of the carbon taken from the air , but the tree has to come about in an environment , and that’s a problem for our thoughts because the tree is made of the environment in which it exists. We just can’t see anything in the tree that isn’t made of the carbon of which it is made.

The trees that we can mostly look at are on our streets and roadsides. They were once parts of woods or forests and so have been managed and so it’s difficult to know the history of say a single tree and what they would once have been surrounded by. Some are planted in our time and they are also managed. That is , they are given space by us and so a tree with that space has branches going in all directions unimpeded.
If trees grow because of instructions in the seed learnt from their past and they somehow know about gravity to be able to have a root system to support themselves, they would also all have to have learnt or know about the wind and rain and soil and rocks etc. The thinking of it is very difficult to do. We just don’t know how to think about it and we don’t even know if our thinking about it is right or wrong or restricted. But to say that trees evolved makes no sense , and it feels like an obstinate sort of reasoning to say that trees evolve.
The tree , with that kind of reasoning , would have to know how to evolve , otherwise they would at some point fall down. That would mean that everything that evolved would have to sort of know how to evolve. That is incomprehensible , and in any kind of thinking , just can’t be used to explain how a tree has something that it uses or is used by , to evolve.
It’s the same for if we think of a finger on a hand. The finger , if it evolved , would would have to have behind it , or in it , an ability to evolve into a finger. Then there would have to be a billion of other organs in say bodies all evolving using an ability to evolve. Then we say that animal’s and trees evolved.

Back on trees. When the tree roots hit rocks they spread wider. The little seed has to get those roots to be able to support maybe tonnes of weight in a few years time and so those roots have to be in place before that extra weight is added. If the weight was added before the necessary roots , the tree would topple over. They seem to know what to do even on the slope of a hill. The trees still grow upwards and the roots grow downwards despite which part of our round planet earth they are on. And again they rarely fail. You rarely see a tree that has toppled over unless an extraordinary weather event occurs.

Evolution theory would suggest that trees would be continuing today growing higher and higher , but that would lead to trees falling down every day all over the place. It just doesn’t happen. Trees and plants don’t ever exceed their limits in terms of height and weight. There can be no evolution involved in that , unless all of the evolving has taken place and all the trees on earth are now at just about the right height and weight etc. If the evolution of trees was continuing then failures would be occurring everywhere today , and we don’t ever see it.

There are those ideas that todays trees and plants and living animals started off small from out of simple molecules coming together millions of years ago somehow from chemical reactions to go on to produce the rest of life. Trees seem to be a bit different from life. Looking at them it’s hard to imagine that they were ever anything less than what they are.

But trees are made of the carbon taken from the air. Somehow it must be the seed that gets the sun to split the carbon out of the air from the other properties in the air and then the tree somehow sucks up that carbon through the leaves over the whole of its life and the tree grows. The grass and all other plants and flowers do the same. It’s almost like trees and plants exist to take the carbon from the air to make the air perfectly breathable for animals. More conjecture of course. But today we are talking about climate change and carbon capture. So the trees and plants have been capturing carbon for us for millions of years and it’s no wonder that we are wondering about what happens when we release all that carbon back into the air.

We can watch time lapse videos of plants and flowers that show them growing into whole flowers in say 30 seconds. Not so easy with trees. But it leaves the thought when seeing those plants and flowers growing quickly in the videos that even if they have evolved to be what they are , they wouldn’t use evolution to do it. If the conjecture made above that trees exist to make the air liveable for life has any fact in it , then the trees that sort of have a job to do wouldn’t rely on evolution. That is that once upon a time there were no trees but the air needed something to capture the carbon to make it more breathable. If that were the case then the tree would just come into existence. The tree that is going to capture the carbon wouldn’t need to mess around evolving itself. That of course would mean that every substance including life just comes into existence.

That’s a bit of of problem in thinking. We only have to think of a dandelion popping up in the spring or a rose bush also popping up it’s roses every year and know that our thoughts of evolution are almost not necessary. Evolution would have to be involved with making them firstly occur and then occur once a year to do all sorts of things in different seasons. We sort of give the trees and flowers a secondary process outside of what they are to make them exist. They exist , and then we say they have the imaginary process of evolution acting on them.

It was once thought that a tree must be taking food in from the soil using its roots to make it grow. But some had a think and thought that if that was the case then there would be a great big hole in the ground as there would be hardly any soil left and the tree would fall down. So some wondered and grew trees in big pots and only fed them water. They noticed that the soil was still the same amount but the tree still grew. They and we might think magic. Now though we know it’s that photosynthesis thing. Billions of tiny particles of carbon taken from the air with the help of sunlight and absorbed through the leaves to solidify into tree trunks and daffodils and rose bushes and then oranges and apples etc. Simple as that.

It isn’t of course that simple , because how was the tree that once didn’t exist aware that the air with carbon was there for it to become a tree. Same for any other plant like the carrot plant. The carrot is made from sugars that are made in the leaves in the photosynthesis process. Not sure how they get the colour orange , but if it was from the evolution idea of natural selection , then we would have to assume that other colours were tried out along the way.

So on the main theme , surely something like our ideas of natural selection or random mutations couldn’t be involved with this. Google searches on trees say that they have evolved ways to protect themselves. No explanations or real proof at all. Absolutely none. They do of course protect themselves with a layer of bark on the outside of the tree and lots of poisonous chemicals in the leaves to ward off insects. Then like say a rose or holly or bramble bush there are thorns and thistles. All of this protection is said to have evolved through random mutations and natural selection.

But using the the word evolution and the thought that they evolved seems misleading. Apart for there being no evidence for it , just conjecture , they surely do have thorns and poisons to protect themselves because thorns and poisons will do the job. Having to naturally select thorns and poisons from goodness knows what else , would have left the plant or tree vulnerable from the start. Some writers though also often use the word ‘adapted’ which allows more freedom in how we would think about how say plants or trees in a dry dessert have all the qualities to retain water. Adapted at least leaves room to think that we don’t know how. Using the word evolved on the other hand carries with it the words random mutations and natural selection and that we do know how , even though we certainly don’t.

Just on the plants in the desert. Some types exist that don’t survive the year. They wilt away in the sun , but what they do quickly is make some seeds while they have time. The plants are gone but they have left their seeds. There is no natural selection going on with that. They know to get those seeds out quick. They surely could not have been naturally selected as the first desert plants wouldn’t have known that they themselves will only last 3 months. Same as some insects that live for only a few days. They hatch and almost immediately search out a partner to make babies.

But just on some plants in dry regions like cactuses that use water in the way that they do , it again seems futile to imagine that they relied on random mutations and natural selection to do what they do. It doesn’t seem likely that the cactus in the desert evolved from trees or plants that lived in the past in wetter conditions. Even substituting the word ‘evolved’ to ‘adapted’ leaves a complete void as we’d have to have then the ‘theory of adaptation’. It fails straight away because it means that the cactus somehow gained the ability to live in dry conditions.

Remember stinging nettles. They still exist. But how do they happen to make a chemical that stings us like a snake has a venom to paralyze it’s prey. Both the words evolved or adapted blocks all thought to explain how they evolved or adapted.

These red cherry tomatoes attached to green stalks in a precise order on my kitchen table don’t look like they exist in that neat setup because they evolved or mutated from an earlier non tomato and that they were naturally selected while other other tomato setups didn’t survive.

We might just think about the red tomatoes but the green stalks are part of the whole. So it would mean that the tomatoes were naturally selected at the same time as the green stalks that hold and keep them together. Then there are all the chemicals in them that would have to have evolved at the same time as all the above.

Similar of course to bunches of bananas and the millions of other fruits and vegetable set ups. The problem though always comes back to how did the first ones come to be. Those tomatoes have seeds in them that can produce more tomato plants. The seeds have an ability to make more tomato plants.

Was and is the idea of evolution and mutations and natural selection just an invention to help with the frustration in us because we can’t think in any way about how those tomatoes and the plant parts they are growing on exist. It’s back to thinking about whether the chicken or the egg came first. And we can’t come up with anything. Same with the acorns that fall from an oak tree.

When we look at that acorn that falls from a giant oak tree we might think that the tree is the important part and that the acorns are made to produce a new oak tree. They are. But when we look at a tomato plant we might think the tomatoes are the important part. But the tomatoes are are like the acorns in that they contain the seeds to make a new plant. Working on. Think I’ve lost the plot. Doesn’t matter. But every part in a plant or tree or an animal goes to making the whole of them.

Then there are our thoughts with how the teeth configurations in millions of animals are so exact. They fit in every mouth of every animal so precisely. A baby human grows 20 teeth that all fall out a bit later to make way for a second set of 32. How does our evolution theory have anything to do with that. Teeth are exactly squeezed in every different sized mouth on earth.
We could simply think that teeth do what teeth do along with the gums and mouth that they they fit into , and not invent the idea that somehow that happening evolved.
There is again of course the formation of just a tooth , it’s constituents and shape. In simplicity , the tooth just either evolved or it didn’t evolve,. We’d have to believe it evolved or it didn’t.
It’s hard to get beyond the thought that we have about it to explain the thought that the tooth did or didn’t evolve because the idea of evolution of it happening is there. The word evolution is a monumental word that carries the idea that teeth and fruits with seeds evolved.

It would of course go on and on with thoughts like this , but this isn’t about what or why fruits and teeth do what they do , it’s just that it seems more that none of them surely rely on some imaginary evolution process to do be and do what they do.

One last thought on this. The eyebrows , conveniently situated above the eyes of humans have remarkably uncannily survived since we were monkeys. They send sweat and rain water around the eyes and also down over the nose. The eyebrows also soak up some sweat and release into the air too , so it doesn’t go into the eyes. And we’re also left with eyelashes that do probably endless things like dealing with insects and dust. Don’t know.

But how are we left with eyebrows and eye lashes that protect the eyes after being monkeys or apes when most of the fur and hair that we had as monkeys or apes once had has gone. It would mean that most fur was naturally deselected and that the eyebrows and eye lashes have remained.

That would be some extraordinary monumental reliance on something like natural selection. Very much like imagining that legs and feet evolved and became good for walking. It seems more likely that the ability to walk comes before legs and feet and the eyebrows exist to protect the eyes.

Surely eyebrows exist to do what they do , and legs and feet exist to do what they do , and eyes and ears exist to do what they do. No natural selection or natural deselection and no evolution of them at all. Our imaginary ideas about how they exist are only our imagination of thinking how they come to be and any idea that we have come up with so far is pure conjecture. And of course we can’t think outside of our thinking. We could wonder why we can’t think outside of our thinking and also make conjectures about that , but we know absolutely that the conjectures we come up with are restrained by what we are able to think about . Even thinking about our thinking about our thinking is restrained.

That’s possibly why we are content to accept evolutionary ideas. Could almost include that we have evolved to accept the best thoughts on how we exist. So we have nothing in reality to go on. Maybe one day a new species will be able to do other thoughts.

Infact , when we see the layers of the earth with different and new animals appearing over time we would have to surmise that a new species is going to occur in the future. It absolutely will happen. We can’t predict what the new species will be , but it surely will happen. We can in some way think out of our thoughts to know that new animals will exist in the future. Many species have existed in the past and many have gone extinct. Problem is that our evolution theories are backed up with scant evidence. If our evolution ideas were any good we’d be able to predict the next new species.The next new species though will come about. Chances are that the new species also won’t know what they themselves are about.

For now though , one phone call to another planet though could help. More on that later , although obviously I’m not going to come up with how we make that phone call.

Then stretching it a bit , we have television and window curtains and temperature thermometers and cars. That’s human inventions using the resources available. To be able to do any of them has nothing to do with evolution so nothing at all has evolved. And today might be no more important than tomorrow or yesterday. We don’t know if any of these time concepts exist. Any ones instant in anyone’s thinking in just this moment in time is a whole thing. Every animal is at this moment experiencing the now.

What is astounding is that each animal is singular. Each animal is surviving on it’s own , sometimes nightmarishly having to live. Astounding too is how a single human can have to think about what they are. Why are we so singular and in this position. And what for. No idea. ( Will delete that miserable thought later)

Back on trees though. They might be an entity. In other words , trees could have always been trees and may have never evolved from say a blade of grass. Of course though that still leaves all the where did it come from and how , and it’s seeds etc, but settling on an evolutionary idea could and seems to be totally wrong. After all , again , how did the tree know that carbon was available in the air to form itself. Then again I suppose the blade of grass would have had to have known about the carbon in the air and we could say it evolved into the tree.

But even then , we get almost nowhere with our thoughts about it. We’d have to assume that in the seed is something that makes the plant or tree make more seeds when it turns into the whole plant or tree. So in the seed there is the something that makes sure the tree or plant that it turns into , makes new seeds. Is the seed acting alone though. We can’t look at a seed and see what’s in the seed that makes it turn into whatever. I suppose after that though , it would be why would a tree want to be a tree and so on.

Simple evolutionary thoughts don’t help at all and there is no evidence of it at all to support some evolution process. Clearly , acorns that successfully grow into an oak tree have never relied on evolution and like everything else are are not products of evolution.

A fruit or a leaf seem to need to be a certain look and composition and shape. We can look at one or the other and try to imagine that they needed from an earlier time a process to be what they are. But it is our conjecture that they were at some point different to what they are today and so we say they evolved. Of course they once didn’t exist , but it’s very difficult to look at a tomato and not think that it was just deemed to be , with or without evolution.

Next chapter. The simple eye spot on a single cell.

Home