FACTORALY - E14 TREES

Episode Date: November 30, 2023

Another subject that just gets bigger and bigger - a bit like a tree, really. Trees have always been, and continue to be, one of the most important organisms in the life of humans. And yet, we take them for granted most of the time. This episode highlights just how vital (literally) trees are to us. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello everyone. Hello Bruce. Hello Simon Wells. In that case I'll throw a fielding in there. Why not? Just to clarify, I think you're actually the only Bruce I know. Am I? No, I know another Bruce from a networking group. Apologies to that Bruce. If he's listening, he'll be crushed.

Yes, I'm friends with a chap called Bruce Woolley. He's a musician. Actually, listeners may have heard of him. Bruce Woolley? Yes. I'll look him up. Do. That's what we do, isn't it?

Look stuff up. Look stuff up about stuff. If we're curious about things, we look things up. And if we can't find the answers, we keep on looking. What stuff have we looked up this week then, Simon? Well, this week, Bruce, we've been, well, I hope we've been looking up the same thing because otherwise this is embarrassing. I've been looking up things about trees.

That's lucky because that's exactly what I've been looking up things about trees. That's lucky because that's exactly what I've been looking up as well. It's almost as if we planned this. I know. Do you know what would be worse? If I was barking up the wrong tree. Oh, that's incredible. I'm so glad you said that. This has been such a big topic this week. I've had to really

prune back. I've had to lop a few things off. I've had to really prune back. I've had to lop a few things off. I've had to fell a few extraneous facts that weren't really necessary. Big old subject, trees. Yeah, because when we thought about it, you know, trees are fairly straightforward. And they really aren't. There's just so much to say about trees. Absolutely. Absolutely. I didn't know whether to go down the scientific botanical route or the historical route or the pop culture route or I've just used the word route three times and hadn't even realized I was making a pun.

So many routes. So many routes. So Simon, you're very good at these definitions and things. What's a tree? A tree? Well, it's one of those big things that's growing out there in the garden, isn't it? A tree, so the definition of a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves above. Okay. I understood that there are a lot of layers in a tree. If you go from the bark inwards, so you've got bark sort of protecting everything inside.

And then you've got, this is a good one. I thought it was phlegm, but it's not. It's very nearly phlegm. It's phloem. Phloem. Phloem is the thing that transports the sap from the leaves to the other parts of the tree. Because actually it kind of goes that way. So the leaves feed the tree rather than the tree feeding the leaves, which is quite interesting.

Okay. So then you've got that. Then you've got the cambium, which is responsible for the growth of the tree. So cambium, if you chop a tree down and have a look at the rings, those rings are made of cambium. Okay. And that allows them to grow outwards and upwards and allows them to become much larger than plants that don't have a cambium.

Oh, I see. That's one of the differences between a tree and a plant is that cambium. It has a cambium. Yeah. And then you've got the xylem or sapwood. And that's the thing that transports the liquid or the fluids up into the tree from the roots. So the roots pick up water and moisture

and then transport it up to the rest of the tree. So that's what... And then the innermost layers of the xylem, right in the middle of the tree. So that's what, and then the innermost layers of the xylem, right in the middle of the tree, are the heartwood. And this is dense and strong, and that's why trees grow up to be big and strong. I see. Well, you've obviously gone far, far further down

the scientific route than I did. That was all new information to me, so thank you for that. You're very welcome. Yeah, but I thought,, I thought you're very good at this kind of like, the etymology and all that sort of stuff, and the biggest and the smallest. I'm sure we're going to come on to you later. Oh, we will.

But I just thought, you know, what makes a tree a tree? And I thought that's actually quite a difficult question because, for example, there are trees that are actually not trees, but we'll come on to them later as well. Oh, will we? Yes. What kind of tree is not a tree? Well, that's one to start pondering before we get there. Yes.

So trees are really useful things, generally, and they have been useful since the beginning of time because without trees we wouldn't exist because of the whole oxygen thing the whole oxygen thing right okay yes um the the rainforests are known as the the lungs of the world aren't they yes um so we well we human beings and other animals and other life forms breathe in oxygen we breathe out carbon dioxide not monoxide no very different yep um and the tree the plants breathe that in and pump out oxygen in a really nice symbiotic life cycle-y way isn't that great isn't that brilliant it's so good you know wonderful piece of of harmonious living together one thing benefiting the other. Yes. Until the one thing goes and chops the other thing down. Yeah, there is that.

Although, you know, okay, Amazon rainforest aside, actually, a growing tree absorbs a lot more carbon dioxide than an older tree. It's the new growth that absorbs the carbon dioxide. So if you have a well-managed forestry, then you're actually creating more beneficial, a better carbon footprint. Right, okay. So in effect, you're cutting down an older, less efficient tree.

Yes. And if you're planting one for everyone you cut down, then you're replacing it with a younger, less efficient tree. Yes. And if you're planting one for everyone you cut down, then you're replacing it with a younger, more efficient one. Exactly. And the older tree that you've cut down is really, really useful. What can you do with an old tree, Bruce? Well, you can live in one. That's not where I thought you were going to start. Well, you can make a house out of one. Oh, oh i see that's a lot less literal than i was thinking yes no you could well you can okay well let's let's start with making a house from one so like you know for example like a log cabin would have been one of the earliest i mean formed apart from when you

move out to the cave when the cave isn't in the right place sure and you need to live somewhere else apart from the cave which you can't take, when the cave isn't in the right place. Sure. And you need to live somewhere else apart from the cave. Which you can't take with you. Which nobody can take with them. Where you can build your own special cave out of trees. There you go. And I've actually stayed in a log cabin in the Smoky Mountains, which was amazing.

It was built by hand by somebody. Oh, beautiful. A fantastic place in the middle of nowhere, with only the sound of the wolves to keep you awake at night. That suddenly got slightly less common, but okay. As long as there's a good lock on the door, that's fine. Yeah, but then, you know, it might be that your cave isn't anywhere near water.

So what you want to do is you want to live near water. So you build your portable cave, as is logs, by the water. But then you need to be able to get into the water without getting too wet. So you use the tree to make a boat. You do. You sort of like get a rudimentary tool and you carve out the middle bit of the log

and you make yourself a boat. And boat building i mean boats are still made from like obviously very high-end boats sure but some boats are made still made from trees yes of course yeah and they have been for years i mean the vikings were obviously the the the champion shipbuilders of their time you know making their boats from oak but they did an awful lot of other things with trees. So the whole of the Viking community relied very heavily on trees. I mean, just for things like bows and spears and arrows and shields. And the person who was the Viking name for a woodworker is very onomatopoeic.

Okay. It's a snicker. Oh, a snicker. That's beautiful. It's just from the noise that they make when they're carving the wood. Oh, that's great. So how many sorts of trees are there? There must be loads. How many actual individual trees?

Well, types of species. Okay, types of trees, right. So there are around 73,500 species of tree in the world, which I'm really surprised that it's that many. Apparently about 20,000 of those we haven't actually yet discovered. There's an estimate. So that's an estimate then? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's not how many have been discovered. That's how many there probably are,

if we include the ones we haven't yet discovered. Of those 73,000 species in the world, 100 species are indigenous here to the UK. That's not very many, is it? It's not very many at all, is it? It makes you wonder where they're keeping all the other ones. I imagine they're keeping them in the Amazon or somewhere in South America. Probably. Probably somewhere like that, yeah.

So, yes, we're quite a woody country here in the UK. Before man came along, you know, the entire place was just one big dense forest. The Great Forest. The Great Forest, indeed. Tell us a bit about the Great Forest. I know nothing about the Great Forest apart from it's sort of like a memory in my head. Okay. I think Sherwood was probably part of it.

Yes, it probably was. So I looked into Sherwood a little bit so I'm ever since childhood I've been fascinated with the the legends of Robin Hood there's there's one particular oak tree the the oak is just an absolute staple of of English treedom we have an awful lot of oaks that grow in this country mighty oaks indeed they're big and they're tall and they're proud and they're British. And they're a bit like you and me, actually. But a bit more gnarly. I've been told that my performances are wooden. But I've never...

And there's a particularly large oak in Sherwood Forest called the Major Oak, which it's been suggested that Robinin hood and his gang used to hide in because it's big enough to do that sort of thing um and this tree is is about 1000 years old give or take uh it's canopy so the the the reach of its leaves is 25 meters wide um and it's a big big old tree it's a big tree 25 meters is a big tree it's large isn't it um but the it's not called the major oak because of its size i always assumed god look at that that is a major oak um in 1790 there was a major in the army uh called uh major hayman rook and he wrote a book talking about historical trees

in his local area around Sherwood. And he wrote about this particular tree. And because of his title, Major, it sort of became the Major's Oak. And there's a... I went down a little bit of a rabbit hole looking at historical or trees of particular interest. And there's an organization called the tree council who look after trees and they they sort of they're an umbrella

uh organization i really wish they'd call themselves a canopy organization that would just be far funnier yes um and they they look after and they encourage the protection of trees. And they have written a list of 50 great British trees, which are either particularly big, particularly old, particularly historically important. And that is one of them. Another one of them is really close to where I live in Raysbury, directly across the Thames from the fields of Runnymede. Okay. And this is called the Anchorwick Yew. And for whatever reason, oaks and yews seem to be the two longest living trees, in our country at least.

And the Anchorwick Yew is somewhere between 1,500 and 2,500 years old. So quite old. That's an old tree. It's kind of dead. It's a bit stumpy. It has a diameter of eight metres at the base. And it was an important local landmark. There are suggestions that that is actually

where the Magna Carta was signed because it's old enough and prominent enough for that to have actually been the place of the signing of Magna Carta. And would have sheltered you from the rain, I guess, as well. Absolutely, yeah. In a wet day. Yeah, absolutely.

And this tree is very prominent with the local Druid Society. Ah. And on the summer solstice, you get a gathering of people around this tree to celebrate the solstice, there are little scraps of paper with prayers and wishes and good vibes stuffed into the bark of this tree. Oh, nice. And that's made it onto the Tree Council's list of 50 great British trees. So I keep thinking of the Style Council whenever you say the Tree Council. So I was thinking of like sheltering under trees and the the biggest tree that i know not tallest but the biggest tree that i know i used to work for a for a for a technology company

called banyan okay and their their logo was a banyan tree i don't know if you've ever seen that they are the weirdest things in the world the the banyan trees. And they kind of grow outwards, but then the roots grow kind of down from the limbs. So there are limbs that go, the limbs go out and then a root will go down. So they look like kind of like cloisters. Oh, interesting. So you can go under the shade of a banyan tree as opposed to a cul-de-bar tree. They are huge, though. There's one in india

this tree is five acres wide one tree i beg your pardon it's five acres wide uh it can shelter tens of thousands of people and they can live off the figs that grow on the tree and it is the most amazing thing what's it called it's a banyan tree and this five acres i mean that's five acres presumably we're talking about the canopy this is the canopy yes well i mean technically because the roots are going down and then they're feeding the branches out and it just keeps going this one's in um andhra pradesh. Okay. It's crackers. Wow. It's huge. And as I understand it, the root system of a tree

is roughly as broad as the canopy is. It's almost like a mirror image if you were to take a cross-section of the earth and look at a tree sideways. The roots kind of look about the same shape, size, etc. as the canopy above, but underground. Yes.

So that's a lot of roots taking up the ground there, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, I think that Milton, when he wrote Paradise Lost, I think that he sort of saw the banyan tree as where Adam and Eve would have... Right. Maybe the fruit of the tree might have been a fig from a banyan tree. Ah, interesting. That kind of thing.

And they are just, I think they became India's national tree after independence. Okay. And it's used for religious worship. It's used for medicine. Right. There's just so many different things that you can do with a banyan tree.

They're just amazing things. So I've talked about the widest one. Do you know what the tallest one is? I bet you do. I bet I do as well. So I was looking at, instantly, when you think of really big trees, you think of America, don't you? You think of redwoods and things like that or at least i do

um there is a tree in uh in a place in california called the giant forest which sounds magical giants yeah it is it's it's um some of the biggest trees in the world live in um the giant forest in california and there is one particular tree called the general sherman tree which is stated to be the world's largest tree ah how tall how tall is your world's largest tree because i've got a world's largest tree as well and it's not the same as my my world's largest let's compare our largest trees okay is my is mine bigger than yours so mine is called the hyperion right and it's 115.61 metres. Oh. Oh, well. Okay. Mine's called the General Sherman and it's only 83 metres.

This one's 22 metres taller than the Elizabeth Tower in Parliament. It's called the Elizabeth Tower now, isn't it? It is now, yes. Used to be St Stephen's. It has never and will never be called Big Ben. It will not. Not amongst people like you and me, Simon. Stephen's. Yes. It has never and will never be called Big Ben. It will not.

Not amongst people like you and me, Simon. Not on our watch. Okay, so that's yours is taller. Maybe mine has a greater diameter. My tree, my own personal tree, the General Sherman, is 11 meters in diameter. Oh, wow. I don't have the... It might be about the girth thing, because I don't know what my... It might be a girth thing.

I don't know what the girth of the Hyperion is. Okay. Let's assume it's less. Okay, fine. So, yes, the tallest isn't necessarily the widest. The widest isn't necessarily the tallest. They might even be quoting it on volume rather than length who knows but they're both quite big they are they're huge so that was a couple of the world's largest trees we'll we'll

have no infighting as to which is bigger than which um i i then had a little bit of a look into bonsai trees um the other extreme bonsai trees are quite small and i didn't realize this the word bonsai means tray planting ah and it talks about the method of growing a miniature tree it's not actually it's not actually a variety of tree in itself uh it's the the method of growing it and bonsai the art of bonsai itself comes from Japan but it's based on something that the Japanese discovered on a trip to China around the 6th century and

China had miniature trees their art was called Penjing but it was a little bit more wild it was less cultivated so the Japanese took it, made it into bonsai and it's all very pretty and neat and tidy and and well clipped and well pruned but essentially you can use any type of tree so long as it's sort of nice and and woody to make a bonsai tree it's not that the variety is naturally

small it's just that because you're growing it in a confined space and you're clipping it and pruning it it doesn't grow any bigger than the space that it's grown in. So you can have it in a bonsai oak tree or seed or anything. The most popular ones are ficus, juniper, elm, pine, maple and azalea. But yes, there are bonsai trees that have been handed down from generation to generation that are hundreds of years old, if they're looked after well enough. Have you seen some of the, I mean, the tools, the gardening tools that go with the bonsai are just amazing. Absolutely.

Those tiny little scissors that you use for pruning it, they cost thousands and thousands of pounds, those scissors. They're very specialist, aren't they? Yeah. Yeah. And that's part of the whole art of bonsai, that it takes focus and you have to be patient and it's a craft. It's something you sort of really have to zone in on and cut away the distractions around you. Never tried it, but it sounds like fun. Yes. It's sort of a bit like sculpture, isn't it? You kind of clip away the bits of the tree that don't like the tree that you want.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And of course, for a certain generation, you can't think of bonsai trees without thinking of Mr. Miyagi. Yeah, that was going through my mind. Good, good. Not just me. The more I think about this subject, the bigger it gets um you can even wear trees it's quite interesting yes so things like um rayon and viscose right um come from trees i always so

i always thought that rayon and viscose were like these sort of like synthetic materials yes because they're so soft they feel like a nylon-y material. But they're actually made from cellulose. From like a eucalyptus tree, for example. Is that so? And they're also made from, and now I'm going to be contentious, they're also made from bamboo. Okay. Is bamboo a tree?

I'm going to say no because it doesn't have branches. You're right. It's a grass. Not what I was thinking. You know, if you watch Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, when they've got these 50-foot bamboo trees, it's technically grass. Is it?

Yes. And it's technically grass that you can get rayon from and then wear as underpants. Right. Well, fair enough. So this current trend of bamboo cutlery and crockery and glasses frames and all that sort of thing, that's nothing new. No, it's been happening in Japan and China for a very, very long time. I mean, bamboo is such a useful thing. And they use it as scaffolding, for goodness sake.

Yes, yeah. But again, sorry, we can't really talk about it that much on this episode because it ain't a tree. Oh, well, we'll have to come back and do an episode about grass then. Oh, no, actually, knowing your mind, that could lead us down some strange avenues. Yeah, man. So what else can you get from a... Well, paper. That's, again, I think it would be an entirely separate episode

um in in essence as far as i understand it you mush up mush up a tree mush up a tree um mix it with water take the bark off first because the bark's not really good that's true um and that's how you make paper but before paper um was was sort of easily accessible, people actually used to use the bark of a birch tree to write on because it's particularly thin and relatively flexible and conveniently white. So you can use that to write on. And there's a connection between the word birch and the word book. So long established as that idea of writing on birch been. The ancient word for birch was libra and then libra became the Latin word for book and that's where we get library and so on and so on. Clever stuff. Now, brief segue, you mentioned in passing earlier on the rings of a

tree as you were talking through the anatomy of a tree. Yes. Is that whole thing about counting the rings to age a tree, is that actually true? I believe it is, yeah. Because every year it grows by one ring because of the cambium in a tree that allows it to grow sort of outwards and upwards every year. And because trees are seasonal generally, they sort of react to the seasons. Yes. So there's a growth spurt in the spring.

And then there are flowers and leaves and all the other bits and pieces that come off a tree. I mean, there's so much to a tree. There is. We haven't even gone into leaves and branches twigs could have done a whole section

about poo sticks there wouldn't be poo sticks without trees no there wouldn't and that would be a sad loss to literature and you couldn't throw you'd have to throw

other stuff for your dog yeah true how dull that would be so there is an interesting fact that i have about a thing called spalted beach and spalted is is means that it was actually diseased so there's a disease uh in beach which i think it's called spolting anyway what it does is it makes these beautiful black lines in the wood and i was shown this by um somebody who's actually making some bookshelves for me right and they um they said

we'd like to use spalted beach okay yeah fair enough so he showed me some pictures of spalted beach and i went great he said i've actually got some trunks that i need to chop up into into wood and then leave them for a bit. But then when they're ready, then you can have them as bookshelves. Okay. And I thought, well, that's great. And when he came to chop up these trees, every so often the saw would make this funny noise. So he'd be chopping through a tree and it would kind of go halfway through.

And he looked at it and there were these like grey marks in the wood. And he worked out that these grey marks were lead. And that these trees had come from the Ardennes. And actually what he was sawing through was World War I bullets that had gone into the tree and the tree had grown around the bullets. And so the bullets were actually in the tree and then if you count the the rings they were back from 1916 1917 and and so i i told him to give me some of the ones with the bullets in so that like it's a secret kind of thing i can kind of behind that

book there yes a world war one bullet wow car nowhere near as impressive as that but um there's a a chain link fence near where i live um which has a tree leaning against it at quite an angle and over the years um the tree and the fence have sort of become one i've seen that yes so in the same way that your tree has grown around those bullets my tree has grown around the fence to such a point where the fence goes through the tree. The tree, as it leans at an angle, starts on one side of the fence and ends up on the other side of the fence with the fence cleanly going through the middle of it. And it's sort of made a bit of a scar on the tree. And the two are completely inextricable. Amazing.

Well, I think we've reached that point where we could just waffle on for absolutely ages. We could still look up more things. We could still go, oh, think of that or do you remember that? But I think we've come to the end of our structured research-based part of the show. Yes, but what we can do is we can leave the rest of the show to the comments that we get from people what a good idea and i'm sure there's gonna be loads of there's so much about trees that we haven't covered yes that we can rely on on our nerdy friends yes to help us thank you nerdy

friends we will be answering comments left, right and centre until the next episode. Brilliant. Well, thank you all very much for listening. This has been Factorily. I've been Simon Wells. And I haven't.

I have, however, been Bruce Fielding. Thank you for listening and listen to us again next week. Please do. Take care. Bye-bye now. Bye-bye