Ologies with Alie Ward - Dendrology (TREES) with J. Casey Clapp

Episode Date: May 8, 2018

Do trees have feelings? How do they talk? How old can they get? Are there any tree stories that will make me cry? Spoiler: YES. Possibly the world's most enthusiastic tree expert, J. Casey Clapp, shows Alie his many tree tattoos, explains how roots communicate to each other, addresses "crown shyness" and schools Alie on the mental health benefits of tree proximity. Also: banana facts and Casey f*cking hates apples.Follow Casey Clapp on InstagramMore episode sources & linksBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramSound editing by Steven Ray MorrisTheme song by Nick Thorburn

Hey, okay, so after last week's two-parter on fear I hope everyone's just feeling calm and strong and collected and most importantly Most importantly ready to talk about trees. Are you ready? Okay. Here's the probably scenario This is what I'm thinking is happening. You either fucking love trees and that's where you're here or you're like good Lord podcast Dad, what is this long-ass episode about trees even get a cover? I'm gonna dive in but only if it's full of infectious Enthusiasm and boy howdy you doubters. You don't know the half of it This episode will make you so

Pumped about trees. You're gonna be bummed about having skin and blood. You're gonna be so jealous of bark and sap and You'll have new scrabble words and you'll start questioning If you should just string a hammock up in the backyard and live outside like a big ape squirrel But first let's get some business out of the way. I'll speak fast Okay, it's important business like telling you you can be an oligite who proselytizes with an oligy shirt or pin or totes If you wear totes at oligysmerch.com. Thank you all for buying and wearing merch patreon.com oligies is a portal through which you can also ensure that this podcast exists real talk

I have like ten other jobs This one takes the most time and pays me definitely the least But I love it the most and patrons help cover costs of hiring an editor to make sure I can put them out every week And I'm still mulling over whether to have advertising I'll be honest with you because I know sometimes you don't want to hear ads and I want you guys to be happy You just want to hear about trees, maybe so I've turned down ads and I just raise income through patreon And if you think that's dumb feel free to tweet me about it because I'm maybe I'm doing business wrong I probably am I'm gonna read those tweets if you give me advice on that just like I read

Your reviews. Oh, what a segue so rating and reviewing and making sure you're subscribed on iTunes You can check right now. Make sure you're subscribed keeps oligies just killing it in the science charts We're still rubbing elbows at the top 25 or 30 science podcasts ever, which is thrilling and Also, your reviews kind of brighten my my cloudiest day is for real This week this one Just delighted me Jude Kenny wrapped up a review by saying boy howdy You may find yourself pulling off the road during your commute on a Tuesday to sit in the still of your car Staring out the window while you ponder your life choices five stars

Thank you for that now on to Dendrology, okay this trees you ready for trees Okay, so Dendro comes from ye old Greek meaning tree and if you're like that, why does that remind me of brain stuff? Well, that's because the dendrite is a part of a nerve cell that looks a lot like a tree So Dendra there you go trees. So you've got trees in the brain. You're gonna have trees on the brain after this I'll tell you that much. You're gonna be pining for more arborist facts Okay, so the term Dendrologist is a little funky. So technically it's anyone who studies trees

Which this human being I interviewed has done I have never met anyone with such a raw zeal or deep knowledge For and of trees you will love him. He's been studying tree biology and dendrology since 2007 and he's currently a tree inspector for the city of Portland, Oregon And he gives talks all over the world about trees. He teaches sold-out classes. I was like so Yes, so you're a dendrologist, right and he demurred at the title of dendrologist. I'm like dude This is like when I was goth. I didn't realize I was a goth until I look back at pictures And I was like, oh, I was definitely a goth. You study trees. You're a damn dendrologist

Accepted but he was like We'll get to that. So I was headed to Seattle for a day to shoot this show called innovation nation That's one of my other jobs and I thought I bet there's gotta be tree people up here There's so many trees. So I did a little googling and I saw there was a sold-out tree workshop The day I was there led by this Portland based dude And then I began very gingerly stalking him online to try to get in touch the only social media I could find was a Facebook account and After following like a few leads I emailed his bosses and then presto the next day

I Creepily invited him to hang out in my hotel room Figured his bosses knew where he was and I hoped he would not abuse his access to chainsaws He did not he was great. So we talked for literally Two hours, which was very difficult to cut down. No tree pun intended about so many burning curiosities Do trees feel pain? How do they talk to each other? What's up with crown shyness? Does he have a favorite tree? Will trees make you write your novel any faster? Does he get sad when he looks at wooden objects? What is tree porn?

And are there any super sad stories about trees spoiler? Yes, and also great ones Also, yes, so I'm gonna go out on the lam and say is a great episode. So stick around for some Really wonderful tree facts. Well, yeah lumber up. I swear to God. That's gonna be the last tree pun I please trust me for a person who is somewhat in denial about being a dendrologist Casey clap Yay, that's gonna be great. So this is your mic you were um, you weren't the easiest person to To gently stalk online. Oh, that's fantastic. So I didn't know I could be found. Yes You can anyone whatever look I was like, I must I talk trees with him. Oh my god. This is so flattering

Okay, so I have a question. Yes, go ahead arborist versus Dendrologist. Yes. What's the difference? So an arborist specifically focuses on trees in the urban area But most of the time an arborist is one who manages a tree in the urban area So if they're gonna cut a tree remove a tree plant trees, they're the ones you usually have something to do with it but then a Dendrologist is usually someone that's more on the research side of the world and they're like, okay We're gonna study this plant its characteristics or at this tree more specifically

It's characteristics and where it fits in with the rest of all the other trees in the world So dendrologist basically work on the the back end of things Classifying all the different trees into certain organizational standards So can you call if you study and you love trees? Can you call yourself a dendrologist? Yeah, I would say I would say so So Casey got his bachelors of science in forest management with a focus on urban forestry And then he went got a masters focusing on arbor culture So it seems that an arborist deals with trees knows a lot about trees and a dendrologist studies

identifying trees Specifically so Casey studied dendrology, but is now an arborist But you guys anyone who knows this damn much about trees is a dendrologist in my book, okay? Let's just agree. There are bigger issues in the world. Okay, when you were going about your education. Yes So Casey's deciding to study trees. Yeah, we're Where do you start? Well for me it started with a just a tenacity of about nature I like to go outside and I like to do things like to play in the mud and climb trees

And then I did I built a pond in my backyard and I was like I love this I'm gonna do it forever and then end up being that I hated landscape architecture like I can't do this This is so Infunctional stuff. It's all I can say freely, but I don't think they gives them enough credit They do very good work, but I was very much a person who needed to manage something and it need to be active and it needed to have an amount of Utility in the landscape, so I was like I'm not really interested so but I was killing it at all the tree courses I was taking I was just like this is immensely fascinating I want to learn more about trees and for no other reason than learning it

so then I transferred over to Oregon State University and I did forestry which was a Way huge overcorrection because they don't do trees for anything But making money for the most part. Okay, we're gonna We're just gonna grow these trees to cut them down to make pulp make paper make money Do whatever they're gonna do. I didn't know that's what forestry was I thought forestry was up like tree-hugging like Name My I wish this is for the people who grew up on fern gully where we're just like I love this so much

It's it is an industry like any other nowadays where you go out to mostly clear cuts for all intents and purposes Which is they get a bad name, but they're not actually that bad in the grand scheme All they would do is go out and say, okay, we have these many or this many trees They're growing this fast. We want to cut them down in 50 years and make a profit. How can we do that? So it's a really important thing and you know We have tables and chairs and pencils and all these things that we use every single day So it's a really important renewable resource, but unfortunately they are looking at it more or less for dollar signs Which is fun. I was wondering is someone who clearly loves trees

Yeah, I got tattoos trees. Do you really? Hmm. Oh, yeah, I got photosynthesis tattooed across my chest. You're a walking PowerPoint. Yeah, sometimes. Yeah, actually You have photosynthesis on your chest. Yeah, what else you have? I got a sugar maple on this arm and then I have roots coming down off of this arm And I'm wearing a long-sleeve shirt so obviously you can't see it Your long-sleeve shirt by the way has trees on it. Yes. Yeah, it has done redwood on the back. Yeah So you're covered in trees Externally and then also from a dermatological perspective. Yes. Yeah, pretty much

Casey also has a pair of white bark pine cones tattooed on the inside of his right bicep They're beautiful the his the tattoo. I'm not making a comment about his bicep. Good job. Either way That's your business. He has an acorn on his other bicep And he also has a dodo bird to represent the delicate balance between endangered plants and animals So he's like a walking botanical garden pamphlet Obviously a very huge advocate for more trees in cities and for me I'm like an LA resident. So this part of the conversation made my heart choke with longing. I was like Do you have trees in your city you lucky son of a bitch

So every tree in the urban area is providing some amount of benefit to the city many times people have no idea And it's a very subconscious sort of thing, but there are reasons why certain streets covered with trees or neighborhoods are more Idealic and other people live in other places that have no trees on their streets and it's a much hotter place It's more rigid more sort of industrial and everyone's like that's a little more or more of an uncomfortable space Yeah, so basically what I do now is say here all the characteristics of trees Here's how they flow here's how they function and here's how you can best use them on your side or in a city to accomplish all these Great things that they do. Do you have a favorite tree? I do. Yeah, but it changes pretty constantly What is it now right now? It would be the coast redwood, which is so stereotypical. I know why is it stereotypical?

It's a majestic tree. I completely concur, but people have generally said Like they come up with the first thing that comes to them. So a lot of times when I ask people they're like, oh willows I'm like cool 80% people say willows or something like that. It's really strange No one thinks about until you ask them the question Do you know what your favorite tree is? I was like, do I have a favorite? Yes, I do. It's an oak I have a favorite tree. I guess we all do but coastal redwoods Kasey's favorite They grow from southern Oregon just down the central coast of California all the way down to about Santa Cruz And they grow in this fog belt right near the shore because that fog

Helps get moisture to the top of these like 350 foot giant trees and if you're needing to imagine a silhouette of one You're like one of the look like you know the logo for Stanford. Okay. Well that there is the image of El Palo Alto one particularly famous local coastal redwood tree It's also the unofficial mascot of Stanford. It's dubbed very creatively The tree and according to Wikipedia the tree despite very heroically Replacing a decidedly more shitty mascot the tree has been called one of America's most bizarre and controversial college mascots People hate it. It regularly appears at the top of the internet's worst mascot lists, which apparently exist

but I'm in a very publicly begged to differ because Once you have seen a gif of a dancing layered green tent with a very happy human being inside your heart's gonna be one I love it. Anyway, coastal redwoods Kasey's favorite tree. So naturally I get it all the time So I had a lot of time to think okay, so specifically they're just the they're just the bomber trees They are raw resistant. So almost no funguses affect them. They are Insect resistant. So insects don't get into them. They don't eat the foliage. They don't get into the bark Their bark is like literally feet thick and it's fire resistant So nothing can penetrate it fire doesn't burn it sometimes fire will actually hollow out the inside of the tree believe the bark alone

But then the trees actually survive because they can sprout from any place that still has functionality down to the roots So not only are they also the tallest trees in the world some of the longest lived some of the biggest in terms of volume? So they've accomplished like all these superlatives Then on top of that they basically can outlive anything They don't have any more predators and they can sprout most conifers can't do that if you cut them down at the base They're done. They're ended really on it for a redwood You cut it down at the base and the roots just shoot up all these new sprouts and you're like oh the tree still lives This is great. The roots are like I don't care. I'm going. I'm gonna go ahead exactly

Yeah, so they're just there are the world's just most bomber trees and if you haven't been there you should go They're just There there's nothing like in the world quick anatomy lesson of trees Oh, okay What are we dealing with and also true or false the root system is like kind of as big as the actual branches and can Mediocrely both. Okay. Okay. So give me an anatomy lesson. Yeah, sort of both. Okay So real quick there are four main organs of a tree first off What is a tree a tree by some definitions is literally like this one guy on a book?

I have he describes it as a bush with a stick up the middle. Okay, that's literally this is like Okay, that's a pretty dumbed-down version. I tried to track down what this book might be just to see if it had any other cool definitions like that a flower is a leaf but on acid but upon googling Bush with a stick up the middle literally all that turned up were photos of George W. Bush flipping people to bird I'll and also this video during his presidency as he's doing a sound check I'm gonna say by today's standards that seems downright charming and Presidential as hell. I'm fine with it Anyway, a tree a bush with a stick up the middle

So that's what we would define as a tree 90% of the things that you know of as a tree are a tree But then there's things like a say Joshua tree. That's technically a yucca It doesn't put on annual rings the same way the redwood or an oak wood And then there is banana trees banana trees are actually just cells. There's no woodiness to them You can go over and knock them over if you really want really not necessarily. It's probably not that easy But they're just big big cells and big Big things are basically just large Herbs just like a hosta or anything else. Yeah, yeah, so there's no actual woody parts in them

So when we still calm trees, so it's like where's the definition going so with so if we have a tree we say, okay It's gonna woody thing. Let's just use a Let's use the Oregon white oak for example Okay, so the Oregon white oak one usually has a single stem comes out has this big nice beautiful globe like crown So there's four main organs you have the roots you have the stem and the branches Then you have the flowering parts and you have the leaves Those are the four things that you would call organs in a tree just for simplicity's sake four main organs Okay, so the roots of a tree generally at least in the Pacific Northwest and in our more temperate regions

This is gonna blow so many minds. They're only in the top two to three feet of soil. What that's it Even the big guys. Yeah, so if you ever are looking at a At a tree you go out to the woods and you see a tree that's toppled over and it's picked up its entire root ball If you measure from the top of that down to the very lowest root, you're not gonna get past four feet anywhere Crazy, I always thought they went way down. Yeah, they go out Why go down any further if you can remain stable and you got all your nutrients and all your water and oxygen you need at the top There's no reason to go down You got all the stuff you need but basically you have imagine a a wine glass or a

Like an umbrella that has a base exactly an umbrella sitting on a platter It would be the best way to imagine it and so that's why roots are so important people like oh It's not that you know they go down. You're like no no no no It doesn't people think it's that mirror image and it's definitely not Oh, yeah, I feel like you do see that kind of like mirror image. Oh, yeah Yeah, I got a friend who got a tattoo of that exact same thing. This is before I knew anything about it The roots go down and almost mirrors the exact same thing going up and it's very romantic versions like oh, that's great You know, you know a reflection of blown above but it's completely false. Oh my god. I have no idea

Okay, so that's the anatomy of a tree really well There's one extra step so this is the next most important thing trees are compartmentalizers So if you cut off one of their branches, they will just close it off and keep moving just like a compartments in a ship All you have to do is close it off and then everything else can go on as normal So they have these two main things you have cambium layer, which is the vascular system of the tree Just below the bark just outside the wood That's where the trees grow and put on their new rings That is where they send nutrients and water from the ground up and that's called the xylem

That's a good word if you play Scrabble X Y L E M You can fit that in on a triple-word score with that X man. You're killing it. You're really doing well Oh man one time I was also I was making a joke So I know a lot of Latin terms for things just because it's the scientific names of plants and their parts And I was playing Scrabble with a friend at a coffee shop in Portland and this other guy came up He's like hey, man, can I just play with you guys? I'm like, yeah, yeah Totally cool and I made we made the joke as like yeah Well, we're only using Latin terms and I swear to God without even blinking and I the guy was just like, okay

And we're like, who did we get ourselves into? He massacred us really nice guy, but oh my gosh He knew had a place Scrabble What was this deal no idea, I don't even remember I didn't ask it was just I we were stuck We were shell shocked. Yeah, we had to leave that coffee shop and think to ourselves We're never playing Scrabble in public again, certainly never with anybody else. It was Ken Jennings. It was just Japanese No, she's wearing a fake mustache Oh my god, okay, so xylem okay buckle up because this parts can get a little technical but you're gonna learn a few new Scrabble words as promised and or

Names for your gluten-free organic children Cambium phloem Photosynth and xylem, of course, which is Greek for wood and yes, that is where the word xylem comes from So Scrabble jeopardy your prep for anything. Okay back to xylem takes all the nutrients and water up to all the leaves The leaves they are doing the photosynthesis. So they're creating the energy from the Sun They start pulling all of their nutrients are all their photosynthate is what some people call it Basically sugars and they pull those down and that goes to the phloem, which is the pipes that go down and that's basically it

Oh tree roots pull things up through the stem and then puts things out to the leaves the leaves are the factory They create all the food then they put that down and distribute it out to the rest of the tree Oh, are you ready for a hot tree scandal? Okay, sometimes a tree Breaks up with its own limbs this drama Many times if there is competition it actually cuts it off itself if they are growing a limb out directly to another tree They get shaded out. They're like, yeah, there's too much energy I'm putting in and not getting enough back. So they just cut it off that branch dies The rest of the tree keeps growing and that was what people call

Self-shedding or self pruning trees. It's not really that the trees just like okay I'm done and then drops a branch some do but that's a completely different story This one is more where the trees no longer Feed it literally close the compartment off to that branch that branch slowly dies slowly dies and then as soon as it falls off Maybe a crow lands on it and it's so decayed just topples to the ground then the tree then seals over that wound trees don't heal They seal they specifically close it up and then continue to grow like nothing ever happened It's like ghosting your own arm. Exactly. You're just like you just ice it out. You're like, yeah, listen. It's not me It's it's definitely you. It's definitely you. I'm sorry. I'm pulling your weight. Yeah, I'll send you a text

Yeah, but then the joke is it's never getting that text I have a gossipy question. Oh, yeah, go ahead. How do you feel about? the redwoods that They have carved an area where you can drive a car through. Oh god, it's mutilation. Okay, that's what I thought Yeah, it's not the worst. Obviously the trees are still living so what's the tree going through? Oh, it's going through hell Absolutely, it's but I went through hell. It's basically like you get a tunnel carved through your stomach But imagine that instead of like we as humans our bodies are just 100% They're all connected to you think so if you get your arm cut off your body's like well, okay

Everything is messed up then you have to you know, someone has to sew it up blah blah blah You don't heal and grow a new arm trees are compartmentalizers So if you cut a hole in their stomach, they're just gonna block off everything around that hole and keep moving Like nothing ever happened because everything else is going on around the tree itself And the wood is actually basically a nerd. It's just a physical structure holding the tree up Okay, remember the cambium layer from earlier So as we recorded we were both drinking tea rated from my hotel minibar and Casey had a Visual metaphor for the cambium layer which really helped. He said if you're looking at a full coffee cup

The coffee inside would be the wood The mug would be the cambium layer and the outside of the mug would be the bark Does that make sense so the cambium layer is like super important in terms of keeping a tree alive So all you have to do is keep that cambium layer alive So if you put a tunnel through one of those redwoods, then it's like oh shoot Well, now there's a big hole in it the tree doesn't like it But it'll get through it You know just like anything else just like if a fire came through and a fire burned a hole in one side

And then burned out the other side as well The tree will be fine. Well assuming the tree lives it'll be fine It'll just continually seal over those wounds and protect itself I went to go look up which tree this was and I found out there's tons of gutted tunnel trees in california We have made an indus tree indus tree Oh god. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry that pun came out of nowhere. It was like a burp during a job interview I'm sorry. Okay, but yes So we've made quite a few park attractions out of tunneling out the trunks of these behemoth trees and just trying to drive cars through them

We're monsters. We're monsters and we love road trips. We're just doing our best But in researching this I also found out about the Hercules tree Which an eccentric rancher dug out a 12 by 9 foot room into and tried to live in it God bless him But the tree was just weeping sap onto his face at night too much So they just were like ah, they just made it into a gift shop But there were a good handful of tunneled out trees down the california coast and two big ones have fallen Most recently this one called the pioneer cabin tree which toppled and very dramatically shattered in early 2017 after some severe weather

The calaveris big tree association remarked quote The storm was just too much for it The the storm was too much for it the storm you're gonna blame the storm That's like knifing someone with a machete and then saying that it's probably probably a metal allergy killed them Anyway, but it's also sucks You can't drive through it anymore unless you have like a mini cooper because they didn't weigh back with the mini teas or the Model teas and now we're driving like hummers and they're like we'll make the hole bigger No

It's the it's worst Now talk to me a little bit about how trees talk to each other because I feel like there was some Some research or something came out recently about how trees can talk to each other through their roots and everyone was like What trees looking at it thinking the trees are watching them? I mean, it's also so cruel to think that that story made the newspapers which are dead trees Cut down a dream like this tree's not talking to you, but the ones that are still living are It is so how do the roots communicate? Do they share nutrients? Do they talk to each other? What's happening under the surface? Oh, this is so fascinating

So this the book you're talking about is called the hidden life of trees Okay, I think not to be confused with the hidden life of plants the pseudoscience book from many years ago Which is absolutely interesting to read but very silly all right I look this up and the weird one is actually called secret life of plants. It's kind of like this woo woo 1973 volume about botanical sentience The authors of which gave lie detector tests to house plants after trying to communicate through esp It's out there. Um, they also postulated that their little green friends might originate in a super material world of cosmic beings such as fairies elves gnomes sylphs and a host of other creatures and quote

the Okay, they made a movie about it Which is not to be confused with david attenborough's Private life of plants documentary in which he tickles the venus fly trap Anyway, so not secret life of plants not private life of plants. Anyway, casey's talking about the hidden life of trees and one author the german peter holben I don't know describes that trees feed each other other sugars through their roots when one is sick Or dying and they communicate to each other using chemical and electrical cues in response to stimulus

Not unlike how humans use vocal cues to say hey fools There are donuts in the break room or how we type posts on secret facebook message board saying watch out This hipster dude sucks. Do not lay with him The girls do that by the way, so it's really comes down to when we communicate as people I say something to you. There's no physical connection between us I just say something and you hear and then you act on it a tree Everything is a stimulus that comes from something so all the roots if it's the same species their roots can graft together What yeah, it's kind of mind-blowing

But what's going on underneath the soil which the soil is probably the most important thing that you can ever consider about a tree Most people look up, but there is an entire underground system of things that no one ever thinks about so regardless the way it works with the Sort of the hidden life of plants is they have they graft themselves together So if you have really really thin bark on those root hairs and those root hairs touch each other And then they can basically start passing Their or the cambium layer sort of connects So something comes out takes a left and then goes into another root Could be from the same tree

But if it's the same species then I'll actually connect together and you can get an entire forest of all these trees connected Which is fascinating But it's not like one tree is connected to all the rest like a network It's like it's kind of like the internet where you have one computer than another computer than another tree than another tree than another tree That all may have or may not have these root hairs connected But then there's a sub layer on that which is mushrooms Okay, selium this is the new thing that really like blew up like radio lab did a whole thing on it And everyone's like ah mushrooms. What trees there are a

An insane amount of mushrooms that are we're actually people have more genetic things in common with mushrooms than we do with Trees and other plants. So that's crazy. It's crazy to think about. They're basically sentient things. That's not true strip that from the record, right We'll give them an honorary Yes, we'll take it So basically what they do is all these um, all these fungus have this mutualistic Relationships called symbiosis and what they do is a fungus has root hairs or mycelium That's microscopic much smaller than the root hairs of a tree

So if you are a tree growing in a place like let's say southern oregon Then you have a much drier condition tree roots are a certain size Maybe like the size of your finger for this instance So you're like, oh man, I can only reach into a certain size crack where this water is and the water is held up Within these smaller pores in the soil. So if the trees can't physically get their roots in to grab it Then it's basically not available. So this fungus ends up getting this mutualistic relationship The tree gives the fungus sugars that it produces up in the canopy So the fungus gets some food and then the fungus if our fingers are the size of root hairs

Then our hair our actual physical hair is something on the size of the Um of the fungus so the fungus can be like, oh, yeah, I can go and grab that water And so the fungus goes in and basically creates like a whole second level of Roots for this tree and the way you can tell if a tree needs water. This is great It's kind of like a straw where on the very tippy top you have evaporation evapotranspiration Evapotranspiration is just literally the process of water going from the ground through a plant or a tree out to the air Okay, so what they do or how the trees function they grab the they grab some water Do some photosynthesis or do whatever they do and then some water escapes

So when that water is released into the atmosphere just like you're drinking out of a straw One molecule pulls on the next pulls on the next pulls on the next using capillary action All the way down the tubes of the tree to the soil into the roots And then all of a sudden that root is pulling up another little molecule of water and you get this full cycle So the as soon as the trees have this this pressure deficit where it's sucking more water into the air Than it has in the ground then the fungus will then be like oh wow There's a pressure deficit and water just osmosis over to that area So it's not that everything is communicating like the fun of the trees like oh, I need water fungus give me water

It's more like there's all these you know scientific processes or these you know natural processes that are functioning in this very specific system That then one little molecule gets pulled up pulls on the next molecule pulls on the next molecule So on and so forth until the fungus gives it a molecule and then there you go Side note I learned of this from a biology teacher years ago And it's always stuck with me that this chain of water keeps the plants healthy So to prolong the life of cut flowers if anyone ever gives them to you trim the ends About an inch underwater to prevent getting an air bubble in the stem and then the last longer So there you go. Don't say I never surprise you with flower facts

And if it's been a while since anyone got you flowers Go get yourself some flowers for a few bucks at Trader Joe's or something Just go pretend they're from your weird old pal ward over here You deserve it kiddo. Just cut them underwater. That's all I ask so Do you dream about trees? um, yeah Yeah, but usually it's related to work in a negative way where I'm just like oh I'm gonna have to have you cut down trees need a certain amount of space to grow because their roots are really what matters

They have to grow out to stabilize the tree to get new nutrients and all that sort of thing So as soon as you have a situation where a tree Is in conflict with development most of the time development's gonna win So you go over and I told people all the time So you measure diameter you take a tape you measure around the tree and it tells you the diameter of that tree So you have to literally reach around the tree and then grab the diameter tape and pull it around So you're literally hugging a tree every single time and so when I was up here in seattle These huge developments you go into a forest and you're like this is a beautiful forest. Oh my god. This is gorgeous

You hug every single tree Every single tree and then look up and say okay. They're all healthy. They're good You look back at the plans and there's a subdivision going in and you just put x's over every single tree Oh the one that you hug. I know all of the ones. Yeah, there's some big ones We're just like you are older than every single person alive right now. Oh my god No, and as a city worker now every time every chance I get every chance when it's appropriate and allowed by code I'm like no, you may not cut down that tree You have to do this to protect it and then usually if you're working with good developers, which there are many

They're just like, okay, sweet. Yeah, what should we do? How should we do this and then we get it set and we save a tree and it's just so stellar Because then when you get done you have this building like I was talking about neighborhoods earlier If you have a an old house an old building with these two huge trees in front of it You get this the sense of stateliness. Yeah But also like permanence where it's like that house exists. It has existed there the trees there there they exist And then it's like nothing is ephemeral. It's all that that exists So people I'm like, hey when you get done with your building

It's gonna look like it was here for the last 50 years and people are gonna walk out there see these beautiful limbs in front of their house in front of their Their patio or Night patio like your deck if you're in an apartment building or something and you can just chill out there and there's gonna be birds hanging around It's gonna be 10 degrees cooler on your deck rather than the deck where they cut down and planted the little tiny trees so You know, there's always rotations things are always coming and going but it's really nice if we can keep the big ones That are really like outstanding trees. You're a tree advocate. Oh my god. Yes. I am every chance like yeah

Yeah, yeah I do want to go back and ask about I realize I should have asked you this question next I've been seeing a lot of information on the internet about Crown shyness Crown canopy shyness where at the very top of a tree the tops of the trees tend not to touch each other So if you haven't seen pictures of what I think is very coyly dubbed crown shyness It's also known as canopy disengagement, which sounds like you're talking about Divorced lovers as far as vibes

But it looks like if you looked up at a tree canopy and all of the trees stopped just short of touching It looks like super wicked mosaic art or maybe like a huge leafy puzzle and your brain is like whoa What plants must have minds or maybe nothing is real and I'm on drugs. That's so pretty and crazy I fact checked Casey's following explanation and dude's on the money It's almost as if he knows a shit ton about trees. Okay. What's the deal with that? Honestly, I've never really given it a second thought the only thing that I can think of Which happens in trees nowadays and this may be completely conjecture So we'll just put a little dot next to that

If you look up the whole canopy of the trees swaying and moving back and forth If there are other trees next to it, they're swaying back and forth into each other So a lot of times trees will hit each other and actually break off limbs And basically, you know, it's it's competition at its highest, you know, or the highest where they're actually literally, you know Putting in punches towards each other So it's less like a mystical tango and it's more just like a windy mosh pit But other than that, I really can't think of a good reason aside from The like getting light, you know, you want to if they aren't touching then they're not shading each other out

So they can just stay right there. It's like no one's asked me that before I think it's something that just came out on the internet. Oh, did it? Okay. Nice. I'm very bad on the internet I just I'm the worst millennial in the world. Yeah, you're hard to find. Nice. That's great. Because you were outside Not looking at a screen exactly. What about the laurax? Did you read the laurax as a kid? Yeah, I do actually have a truffle a tree planted on or tattooed on my arm as well Hell yeah, you do. Yeah So case he showed me the underside of his left arm where he has a little truffle a tree from the laurax Which is this dr. Seuss ecological epic kids book about a dude who cuts down a bunch of fluffy beautiful trees

To make pajamas and he destroys the environment leaving a smoggy apocalyptic wasteland So in the book and on casey skin the word unless Appears etched into kind of a rocky pulpit Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot. Nothing's going to get better It's not it's pretty damn depressing ps after the laurax was released a logging company got Super p. Ode and published a competing pro logging book called the true axe and people were like Logging company. Can you just fucking not anyway a good reminder not to burn the earth because of pajamas Okay, let's talk about old-ass trees speaking of this. Yes dendro chronology. Oh my god

Let's talk about aging trees and tree rings. Yep How can you tell the age of a tree looking at rings and what are some of the oldest trees? And does it hurt the tree when you're boring into them to get a core sample? Oh, yeah, let's talk about tree rings Oh, this is so great. So basically, um dendro chronology is the um strictly the study of tree rings So tree rings every it's you know, pretty well known At least in the temperate regions every tree grows for a certain amount of year Then it goes dormant then it grows for a certain amount of year then it goes dormant So each time it grows it puts on a new ring of wood

On every single surface so on the trunk on all the branches on the roots. That is just an annual count You know for us we treat it like a count for the tree. It's actually the tree getting stronger every single year So sometimes it'll put more wood on if it's a really good year Sometimes it'll put less wood on if it's a shorter year for a shorter growing season or harsher growing season So the rings if the rings vary in width it usually means maybe there was better conditions better water and it grows more That year and then maybe there's a drought and the rings get closer together precisely. Yeah, exactly So in california, which is where the oldest trees grow. Thank you very much We got bristle cone pines and foxtail pines and in the central mountain area

The oldest ones grow they look like a live driftwood. They're craggy and dense and ancient and They look like it's just been a slow motion struggle to get out of the rocky dry earth around them The oldest specimens have been found in the white mountains in inyo national forest Which is in eastern central california kind of borders on nevada I don't think there's a lot going on there other than a bunch of old trees But if you have a tree that is say 2400 years old then you have a climactic record for 2400 years of what was going on like oh in year ad

Two there was Not very much wood. That was a bad year in the mountains of you know central california So what they can do or what they've done with dendrochronology is you can look back specifically in these trees the bristle cone pines What they do is they basically say okay, let's find a living tree Let's find the oldest one the oldest one. I believe is called a mthusila. No one knows exactly where it's at There's another super sad story about the oldest oldest tree. It was so sad. What happened. Oh man. This is the worst story Oh, tell it to me. I can handle it. So you got to feel bad for the guy who did it. It's not his fault He's a victim just as much as a tree. Oh god people are gonna go crazy if they hear me say that

But i'm gonna stick to my i'm gonna stick to my narrative here So kasey's talking about this tree named prometheus and in 1964 A geography grad student by the name of donald rusk curry was poking into trees to find out More info about the little ice age and he was using this thin Increment borer to take what should have been just like a harmless core sample about the diameter of a pencil So dendrochronologists use them all the time not a biggie He just had some of these borers and these borers the increment borers what you're talking about Where you drill into the tree to measure the rings

So he had one of those most of the nice ones are made over in switzerland And if you want to if you break it then it's like several thousand dollars You have to get a new one or have them fix yours that sort of thing So these trees because they grow so slowly and have such dense rings Their wood is really really hard to get into so as soon as you drill in and you pull out this core It's really difficult sometimes to get the actual increment bore back out of the tree without breaking the increment bore Okay, so he drilled into the tree with one increment bore and it got stuck So he drilled in with another one and it got stuck

So he's like, okay. Well, both of my increment bores are now stuck in this tree. What am I going to do? So then the guy um went over to the forest service and said, hey Can I just cut this tree down? You know, I'll count the rings and all these things, you know It's for science like he had all the permits Everything was on the up and up and there was one tree that he happened to be working on Of all the thousands and hundreds that were around him. He just sort of walked up and was like, uh, you I'm gonna measure you So he did it cut it down. Um in the in the usda forest service. Whoever's up there was just like, yeah, go ahead Sounds good. There's a hundred different of them. That's fine

This tree for all intents and purposes is not special other than the fact that it's innately special because it's a really cool kind of of tree Now protected, I believe in california so Cut it down started to count the rings Oh god one two three six thousand four thousands names like four thousand seven hundred years old The oldest recorded living thing on the planet I know and

it was It was so tragic like The collective shock in that world Because apparently there were not environmentalists, but there were certain intrepid people who had known about this tree but People who study trees and find the superlative trees the biggest the fattest of this other than general um Sherman the biggest giant sequoia in the world

All the other trees are very hidden like the tallest um, uh redwood. I think it might be the stratosphere giant There's a couple that are named. Oh my god No one knows exactly where it is very few people because they don't want this thing to happen They don't want people to go and like i'm just gonna take one cone and then all the cones are gone Then stamp all the way around the soil and cause the tree to die. They're like protected celebrities. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah They're so protected and so it's like, oh, no. Are you kidding me? The one tree so everyone got super mad at him was like you cut down the oldest tree And you have to see this guy's researchers studying these trees doing dendrochronology

So it's not that he was just like we're gonna log it and turn it into a table He's just like no, I how I I wasn't And then For the rest of his life. He was just absolutely vilified. Oh my god. I can't see. I'm literally crying. It's so I know I know and you look back on it. You're like, I can't believe Like oh my god, literally 2000 you have to or 4700 years When you conceive of that like the pyramids were built like 6000 years ago. So when um, let's see 2000 years before christ was born These trees were already growing when christ was born. They were already ancient trees by our standards

They were already 2000 years old 2700 maybe So it's one of these things are just like How can I just oh my god, what are the guys conceptualized? Dude, did he go into the witness protection program? I know he should have he just kind of disappeared I think he had changed careers stopped doing anything and he had just sort of settled out But he ended up um this one person remembered his name and he was doing something and someone brought it up and said Hey, aren't you the guy that killed the world's oldest tree and he was just like Oh, don't open up that wound again. And yeah, so it's it's a really sad story

But the guy didn't do it on purpose. It's just hey He was in the wrong place of the wrong time in the wrong tree I mean chances are if you're up there boring trees, you love trees. Exactly. Yeah It's it was it's mind-blowing, but so I got so sad for the tree And also because this guy probably ended up living under a bridge and his family probably never talked to him again Probably couldn't get a job had to eat out of the garbage Give up all of his science dreams for one mistake and I looked into it and turns out he did Just fine. He had a successful career in academia. He was a geography professor nothing to do with trees

He didn't even have to change his name or wear a wig or shave his eyebrows So no one recognized him You guys I once got fired from a job in college for defrosting the mini fridge wrong and breaking it This guy just sailed through life killing the world's oldest thing Prometheus at 4,862 years old was considered to be the oldest living thing in the world until 2012 when a newer oldest one was discovered. It was a tree that was 5,062 years old and you're like, well, what's that one's name if the other one was named Prometheus?

Good question. The new oldest one is unnamed. No one's ever named it. Frankly, that really bothers me It's like the oldest alive thing on earth. Call it Jeff or Yvonne fucking anything. Anyway, I gotta calm. I gotta calm down I gotta take a breather So those are the oldest trees What he was studying dendrochronology and answer your question. Yes, when you drill in it does cause a wound in a tree But just like that big tunnel, it's just a smaller wound The tree will compartmentalize over it and you just have to go halfway through So yeah, if you can hit that pith pull it out then you boom there you go

You got all the rings of that tree as long as the tree was living that entire section But they're so close together you have to actually get a microscope and a tiny little pin to like actually count them out Because you can't see it with the naked eye many times. It just looks like this black sort of Thing you have three or four thousand rings four thousand individual lines in the span of maybe three feet four feet Oh my god, that's crazy nuts. And so this guy so dendrochronology what he was studying This is so fascinating. Basically what the way it works is you drill into the tree You have a living tree you can measure. Okay, that tree is four thousand years old. Cool Now you look next to it and you see a dead tree

That dead tree likely was living Before the tree that was alive that you just measured so you can say, okay I can measure and drill into that tree pull out this ring and then match up those rings because remember Each one's growing in the same place. So its rings are going to have the same thickness and the same The same Chemical compounds so for instance carbon, which is where the story is going to go. It's going to get great Okay, so what they do is they said, okay Let's match up this living tree with this dead tree

And then all of a sudden they realized wow this dead tree was alive, you know, a thousand years previous So I get now an extra thousand years to add on to it once you match up those overlapping parts of their lives Then you find another tree that is even older. That's a dead standing snag that you're just like, oh man, that tree's been gone for Hundreds of years, but it's still standing there because there's no decay that's up there. This is like 11 12 000 feet of elevation There's nothing up there that's affecting these trees at least not historically So now you find an even older dead tree and you're like, okay, cool This older dead tree now I can match up with that other dead tree and you just keep on getting these overlapping Things they just find all these trees match up all of their different rings together

Then boom you can count back as long as you are 100 sure that all those rings are from the same year So they can match all these rings together and by now they've amassed something like 10 500 years of records for climate and carbon in the atmosphere Now what's very cool is they can use that record as a reference to the amount of c4 or carbon in the trees And they can compare it to how we carbon date like artifacts for certain civilizations So it's like a dendrochronologist getting featured on an anthropologist mixtape So what they did is they Recalibrated all the machines early some machines retested these things and found that they were completely off where they're like wow

So we actually had to redo what we thought about european history for example Because we redid our carbon dating and realized wow, we've been kind of off So trees are a paper trail in every way. Yes pun intended Okay, I have a question about how do trees grow around Benches and bicycles and fences like, you know, you see those pictures where a tree is eating a bicycle. Yeah, what is life? What's happening? How did that happen? Oh, it's great. And I've seen exactly the one you're talking about in fact It was taken it's like a an old like Banana seat bike like up in a tree

Yes, and the caption that I read underneath it was like oh someone left this bike against this tree in 1930 And it grew up a that tree was like probably 40 years old. So it's not really 1930 It's just an old bike But trees aren't like grass where if you cut grass the growing part of that grass is at the base It's at the the head or that what is it the crown of the plant right at the soil level So it comes out and then moves up trees They once they grow to a certain point that's it that will be there forever if they put out a branch at one foot That branch will always be at one foot

It'll probably die at some point or get cut off and then the tree will grow around it and don't have to worry about it but basically That bike was put 20 feet up in that tree 100 that's how they grow so they can't lift anything in that regard Oh god, okay quick aside on the back story of this bike Oh, so it went viral with this caption a boy left his bike chained to a tree and then he went away to war 1914 And his parents left it there as a memorial But yeah, like Casey says

Bullshit, okay, so first off the u.s. Did not go to war 1914 Secondly the real owner of the bike Didn't have parents In the 1950s on vassion island in washington this kid named don putts lost his dad and a house fire Which is so sad and a bunch of locals donated items to the family It was a mom with five kids and so he got a bike and he hated the bike It sucked So one day he just ditched it in a swamp and someone must have found it hung it in a tree

The tree grew around it. So he had no idea until 40 years later. He's grown up. He's a sheriff He visited this tree landmark on a vacation back in his hometown and he was like well hot damn That's my bike and it sucks And he says it just belongs to the tree now, which I'm guessing from the way it was wedged into the tree's crotch And it had to grow into its flesh that the tree hates the bike too But what they can do Um or is grow around things so trees grow and they react to different forces around them So if there is a oh, there's actually a great picture I have. Oh my gosh. It's a tree in

The Sierra Nevada, it's a common juniper and there is this big like horizontal stack of Of granite just growing out the tree was growing right just right next to it So as the tree got bigger and bigger all of a sudden it kept starting to push on that rock the rock wasn't budging So then it can't push out anymore, but it's still going to put on these rings So the tree ends up growing out above and below it So the rock just stays right where it is and the tree just keeps pushing out over the top pushing out over the bottom And literally starts to encompass that that physical rock

So it got to the point where it looked almost like the tree had been pouring over the rock And so it like came down and then just like poured off the side of it But it was it was just the wackiest picture and I wish I could find it up I have more questions, but I hope you're not are you late for anything? No, I literally have nothing I told friend I would grab a beer and that's it. Okay. Good because people have questions. Um, hold on People have questions. I I I guess this is so exciting. I know. Okay, wait I could do this all night warning weird question Bear with me. Okay. Do you think that certain trees have certain personalities?

Like I know that that sounds like a very weird magical question But do you see a tree? Maybe this is just because I have a little bit of synesthesia where like numbers and letters have different personalities But oh, yeah, yeah, do you ever feel like different vibes from different trees? I would say so. Yeah Yeah, but I don't know. It's not um, it's definitely not in a specific sense where I'd be like, uh, what's up? That's my bro. That's my tree. You know, we've been hanging out for years and then I look over no tree. I'm like, uh Birches, I can't They just look at me wrong all the time. It's not quite that explicit, but is a my view is colored by

Um, what the tree is doing like the characteristics of it. So like if I see one dream like, uh You are over planted you fall apart all the time You put out flowers and they stink and you pull up the sidewalk. You are just not a good tree I don't I don't want anything to do with you It's not how I feel. It's not it's you know, it's like, oh, I hate you But then you're like, well, you know, you want to hang out later. That's cool It's kind of like what it is like when I was a kid we had this tree growing up that had abandoned it You could sit in it like a chair and we nailed the table up there

So you could perch up there sip a soda in the woods this tree. Oh, we seemed just so benign Kind of like a cool grandpa. That's just like sure you can nail a table into my flesh and put a diet Pepsi on it You little brat. I love you. What do you think about the giving tree book? Does it make you cry a lot? Oh, it does I have it. It's on the I built these shelves and it's on the shelf up above my bed I love that tree or that book. Wait, did you build the shelves out of wood? I did I did but I reused it. It was a palette And I turned it into these cool shelves and I filled it up with cones and tree books and like certifications I think one of my degrees is up there or something like that. So are you ready for some questions from patrons?

Yeah, it's so exciting. I had no idea. You have there's so many questions. I had to cut them off I don't think I've ever gotten this many questions. So holy heck on my patreon pressures Patrons get to ask questions to the geologists. So oh my gosh, okay I'm gonna just run through. It's a rapid fire round answer as quickly as you can. We'll get through as many as you can You got it. I think I can do it. Okay chime at the end when I run. No, I should have a whistle Yeah, I should But before we take questions from you our beloved listeners, we're going to take a quick break for sponsors of the show Sponsors why sponsors? You know what they do? They help us give money to different charities every week

So if you want to know where oligies gives our money, you can go to alley word.com and look for the tab oligies gives back There's like 150 different charities that we've given to already with more every single week So if you need a place to go donate a little bit of money, but you're not sure where to go Those are all picked by oligists who work in those fields and this ad break allows us to Give a ton of money to them. So thanks for listening and thanks sponsors Okay, your questions Okay, here we go. Um beth frosto wants to know do trees feel pain when we trim them?

Oh, they do but not in a strict sense. So this also goes back to the um hidden life of trees where Whenever we personify a tree and we give it sort of a humanistic thing We're always sort of selling it short a little bit because it's like, oh, well, you really Don't want to say that the tree feels because then everyone's going to be really sad when they're cutting down trees Actually, maybe that might be a good thing. Yeah Regardless, usually scientists try not to to do it. Um, except for this one instance with the friend or the Hidden life of trees

That was probably the single greatest thing to happen to science about trees because some guy brought it down to a Relatable level for the rest of humanity and all of a sudden people are like, wow trees. They do feel they do think they do this And then scientists are like, I'm just gonna say yes just because that means that we're on the same page now It's good for branding. Exactly. It's great. So they um, they do feel pain But the pain isn't so much that they are like, wow, they're more because they're compartmentalizers So all that does is create a reaction that says oh, I need to protect myself something may get in y'all do this with dating Hey

Either it's gonna get an insect that is gonna come in or it's gonna be a fungus or both or a multitude of other things So as soon as you prune a tree it will get a wound It's not that the tree is feeling hurt, but the tree will then respond to that So they'll respond immediately especially by the next year and they will just put on new new wood to cover over it So it just puts in these three walls of chemical protection Then grows a fourth wall of wood over the top to seal over that wound And then it never happened. Exactly. It's like it never happened So it's not that they feel pain, but they react to the wound in a way that is best protecting them from any other

Pathogen or insect or something that's going to come in and get them So anytime you cut a tree and then it just starts pushing out sap Hey, it's kind of like bleeding especially if you cut it during the growing season Where it's just pushing out as much energy and sugars as it can to its leaves to grow big and strong You cut that off all of a sudden there's a bunch of pressure inside the tree Literally pushing all this sap out But that sap is also covering over that wound and making it an impenetrable place for all these other insects and things to get in So it's actually literally sealing itself. Right. It's like a varnish kind of yeah, exactly

Delicious varnish that actually leads me to my next question. Dustin Mills wants to know how many different kind of trees Can you get syrup from oh does that hurt the tree? Oh, so it does it hurts it just like anything else But it kind of hurts it in the same way that if you give blood you're hurting yourself Okay, so they have plenty of Stored nutrients and stored sugars and all these things so you can get syrup from almost any kind of tree It just depends on if it's delicious Or if it's so so diluted to where it just takes way too much effort to actually get it So there's a tree called a sweet gum for all you nerds. That is liquid amber cirracea flua

Wonderful wonderful tree Also, one of those trees. It's like I wish you weren't planted so much in the urban area because they just tear up sidewalks But some of the best fall color you're ever going to get in a tree They're beautiful from orange to yellow to purple to red. It's just it's wonderful But what they do is you used to tap them That's why they call it sweet gum because they would tap them in the south and then they would grow or collect all of the Tree sap you boil it down to get all the water out and you get this sugar Some taste really good. Some have other chemicals in it. They make them less tasty

People have used them on birch trees and on other different maples all a bunch of different species of maple But the reason we use sugar maple right now is just because it has the highest concentration of sugar per Amount of sap this still takes hours and hours to boil it off to create the actual thing of which there's no recipe Every bit you get they're just looking at they're like, eh looks done. Really? Yeah, there's no actual like boil it for 10 minutes It's boil it until it looks right That's so analog So side note confession little fyi I always thought that maple syrup just kind of dripped out of trees as is

Like you could just wander in the forest with a pocket full of waffles and just get a little smear here or there But the sap Actually comes out clear kind of like water and it takes 40 gallons of it to boil down and make one gallon of maple syrup Which seems like a lot of tree tiers, but they tap a bunch of them They get just a little bit from everyone. So don't don't be too sad. You can continue to brunch Unencumbered by guilt Zach Charbel wants to know what's the science behind tree grafting and budding because a lot of fruit trees are just grafted Yeah, almost. Oh, this is so great. Every banana you've had has been a literal clone of every other banana you've ever had

What the hell's up with that? I know so this is true. I just looked it up. This is crazy So wild bananas are kind of short and squat. They're full of a bunch of pebbly seeds Nobody loves them. And so we have cultivated this seedless sterile one From a single specimen way back So all the bananas that we eat now all of them of the cavendish variety come from one single Banana plant way back. We just keep splicing. So just think this if you're in love with Michael B. Jordan say or Francis McDormand and you have both eaten a banana

You have the same bananas genes In your colon as them at one point. Isn't that exciting? So cavendish got popular in the 1950s because all the bananas we used to eat also clones They were called fat mitchells or gross michels. They were wiped out by a fungus So apparently, you know the banana flavor we taste that tastes like fake banana. We're like Those taste like the old timey phased out gross michel bananas, which all died. Is this weird to you? It's so weird to me We have no bananas Same thing with apples all the apples that are sweet delicious or golden delicious or whatever it is

They all came from one single tree. That's weird. It's great. So what they do is it is it's really weird and it's really it's Oh, man, it's it kind of makes you feel like now when you look at those trees Maybe this is a personality where it's like this weird egor tree That's like, oh my gosh, you're frankenstein like you just have all these different parts growing on to you And it's just like, oh, you look so grizzled and worn and it's like you're just mishmash of parts from other trees Anyway, I didn't even know that was a thing until very recently. Oh my gosh. Oh, yeah, it's it's it's hidden knowledge I guess what they do is they find the ones that have the best root stock and they said, okay This one's really good

But it just gets these tiny little crab apples that are not very delicious They're just like these are sour So you cut that and if you can find another tree that happen to have this one crazy apple that's huge and delicious and sweet and whatever You cut that apple or that bit off one of those Those limbs and then as long as it's the same size You just literally put it together with a little bit of uh tape around it and some I forgot the compound But there's like a sort of compound that they put on there that encourages All you have to or the encourages the cambium layer to come back together

So literally all you're doing is matching up those cambium layers So as long as the stem is the same size you can match up both cambium layers around Cover that with tape and then it literally just Graphs itself into it and it says if the tree it has a now whole functioning system again. That's It's crazy. It's just like organ transplants. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but more successful But having said that apples are just completely pointless and I'm just going to say this right now So side note. How does casey like that maples? Well, he does not he launched into an impassioned Four-minute anti-apple rant, which I'm just going to recap

They were sold as health food via propaganda After the prohibition because all these cider apples could no longer be sold to make hooch. You see So I looked into this checks out. So now apples are in casey's eyes forced on us as snacks He does not like them. I love him for this But it's just like uh like everyone who buys apples and like I'm going to eat it as a snack I'm like, you're just going to get hungry. You shouldn't bring cheese. You should at least get cheese and some peanut butter I'm not gonna eat it. But I've never heard someone who was such

An apple pho and the reason that I know that that's not good for the apple trees That it's like not happening is because these apples get so laden with these or these trees get so laden with apples To where they're literally breaking their own branches because of the weight and it's just like you guys are turning these into like monsters Like this tree can't even support itself and it's ripping apart I'm telling you dude hates apples. Also casey. I'm so sorry I was literally eating an apple as I was writing these asides life is just complicated Radka vakaria has a question. Why do some trees lose their leaves in the winter and others don't I love this question. So this comes down to a um a specific

Basically a strategy. So if you think of trees as um having a budget one part of their budget goes towards Making a growing tall in competition, you know, physically getting to be a big size growth Then another part of that budget would be towards reproduction because there's no point in growing unless you can reproduce the third part Third big part would go towards um protection So you can do any amount of energy put into any three or any one of those three categories Obviously, there's a couple more categories. It's very simplified in this instance You have a tree it's growing and it gets too cold And so it's not that it actually gets too cold for the leaf itself

It's that wind continually rips through and damages that leaf So what some trees have opted to do or what has worked for them is instead of having just these Dinky little leaves that just get completely destroyed during the winter time or the water gets too The water freezes in the ground so the trees can't pull it up or it gets too cold up in the air And the ice crystals actually form in the leaf itself and rip it apart. Yeah, it's really bad when Leaves and tissues like that freeze just the same as if we our fingers froze The reason that we get frostbite is because it actually The ice crystals in our fingers expand out just because we know ice expands and it rips apart the cells

It's just terrible. P. S. That's the noise I make when my butthole clenches and sympathy pain. So you're welcome Okay, and is that how frostbite really works? It is I never knew kasey is just a font of knowledge he's more like a tap of Sweet fact sap for our brains to boil down So for some trees what they decide to do or what you know work for them is they made their leaves just a little bit tougher So they put more of their energy into making that leaf really strong making it waterproof making it Less edible making it so adding more lignin and more things that make it less More distasteful to different animals

Some trees put a lot of energy into their leaves because they put a lot of energy into their leaves They now can hold them but they don't want to just let them drop because that was so much energy You can't just drop that onto the ground and then regrow it again the next year So really tough leaves they can withstand the conditions So as soon as spring comes if you get an early spring the trees that are evergreen are already ready to go They are photosynthesizing spring comes boom. They are there's they're right off the bat. They would be um able to compete better in that instance Whereas the deciduous trees are still dormant

They have not been growing over this entire season. They've dropped their leaves But because they haven't put so much effort and energy into those leaves. They can put it into something else i.e Into growing really fast or putting out a lot of fruit You get a tree that is deciduous Drops its leaves goes dormant and then as soon as spring has some conditions get really good They shoot up by like two or three feet sometimes And so while you have these other trees, they have put a lot of energy into their leaves They have less energy to put into growing tall less energy into defense

So it's just more of a balance of which is more functionable for this tree at the right time Sometimes deciduous doesn't make any sense because the conditions are so good where you're like, ah, well Why get rid of my leaves? There's no good reason. So up here. It's usually water is a limiting factor So their leaves start to desiccate lose all their water then they drop them then they just wait So it's it's more just about favorable conditions than it is about Climate it really depends on what's best for the tree. Yeah most the time And obviously climate has something to do with it You know, we have evergreen trees here because why lose your leaves if you can just photosynthesize for 80% of the year

Just go for it. And then in the meantime, they're living off of stored sugars. Exactly. Yeah So they're always respiring 100 of the year, you know trees are the only things or rather certain plants are the only things That can produce their own food and then respire to use it So we're respiring every physical or every living thing uses respiration to breathe and that's why we breathe out carbon dioxide and water Trees do the exact opposite they say take carbon dioxide and water turn it into oxygen and a simple sugar or a long chain of sugars So all they do is just store it store it store it and then just sort of sit there and then just eat sugar all year round Until they can start growing again. Just snacking. Yeah, it's really nice. It's delicious. I wish I could do it

Do you think that planting more trees will save the environment? um Yes, okay. I'm just gonna say blatant. Yes. We'll just leave it a yes and move on. Yeah, always plant more trees There's so many good reasons. I we could do a thousand more hours of talking about Do you think there are certain trees that josh bruce wants to know are there certain trees that are better for the environment than others? Yeah, I would say so. Um, but really it's not necessarily better for the environment It's better for maybe the micro environment So small trees that don't cast a lot of shade over a bunch of cement

Not really doing a lot a big huge large tree that shades over a bunch of cement and lowers the heat island effect in a city Which is just the fact that in the cities. It's warmer temperatures than in the associated Crop land or forest land. It's just cooler out there and warmer in here And that's because we have so many impervious services that are taking in heat and then bouncing it back out So if we have a big tree that's growing over the top of that Then we're shading out that area as if we do that over the scale of the entire united states Then all of a sudden we're like losing Millions of tons of carbon just by having one tree shading our house during the hottest time of the day

So in that instance, yes, some are better at Accomplishing our objectives in terms of helping out the environment, but for the most part. Yeah, plant a tree. It's it's always going to be great Um, okay a couple more questions from I we got I got so many questions. There's no way I could possibly answer all of these This would be like a seven hour episode Yeah, there's one who listens to hardcore history here. Okay. Yeah, I'm ready. Let's do it Mark james has a great question. Are bonsai trees actually trees? Are they shrubs with pretension? Oh, man? Can I say both?

Yeah, sure. I'm gonna say both then They do have a certain amount of pretension But it was given and forced upon them So kasey compares bonsai cultivation with traditions like oh, you know corsets and foot binding And if I may add my two cents, I'd say let's lump in modern day high heels, which we're gonna look back With just horror, please mark my words Your grandkids are gonna look back at probably like a holographic photo album of present day women in evening gowns Just grimacing and carrying strappy stilettos at the end of a party and ask grandma

What in turds name were you thinking? This is a nightmare. How did you live? Why did you not stab people with your shoes? And we will say it was just It was just what you did now lather up my stumps. Will you child same exact thing where they're completely torturing these trees in every way So they are beautiful. They're pretentious and it's so bonsai tree Is technically a tree, but literally bonsai means a tree in a pot So that's all it is They just really take it seriously sometimes and I wish I could do it It's actually so hard to do people like I I could do that you'll kill your tree

I guarantee those trees are so well taken care of it's obscene They're like show dogs. They are. Oh my gosh. That's the best way to look at it Yeah, you know, you can almost see him prancing around and all these things In looking this up. I learned that it's actually pronounced Bonsai, which you can say if you're feeling pretentious So that being said recently a centuries old pine bonsai Sold for 1.3 million dollars for a single bonsai. That's a lot of money for a bonsai I got this information on a bonsai website called bonsai empire.com

Which has has a lot of information about bonsais And so what they do is you have this small tree It's a regular tree if you take a bonsai redwood tree you pull it out of the ground A or pull out of its pot and you put it in the ground you give it a thousand years It will be 300 feet tall. No Swear to god. They are exactly the same trees as every other species that exists Every bonsai is the same tree as the regular species that grows out and gets huge So blackpines Japanese blackpines are a great example

Japan they get huge. They're really nice beautiful trees They will use those as bonsai trees more often than not. No way All they do is you pull them out during the dormant season You clip the roots a little bit and you put them back in You add a little bit of fertilizer or something just to sort of keep them going sometimes And then you prune the top and you sort of shape the tree exactly But every time you do that when you cut off any amount of roots A you're taking away a food source for the tree or a nutrient and water source

So it's like okay. Well now I have to regrow that root So they're putting a lot more effort into constantly Regrowing and you're also cutting off of that stored starch in that area You're cutting off a root. You're taking away a certain amount of stored energy And lessening the ability for that tree to get nutrients and energy later. So All you're doing is torturing that tree Literally if you could hear screams during the wintertime you would just hear these little tiny like As then they you know cut off all the roots and then they put them back down and they shape them

So that's why the trees they stay small is because they're literally bound in this pot The same way that feet would stay small if you bound them in shoes, which you shouldn't do it's an atrocious thing So I just went down a real rabbit hole about foot binding which is now illegal But for centuries it involved breaking young girls toes and then soaking them in animal blood and then wrapping them into deformity and about how that was just like accepted Kind of like our modern stilettos because it just it made the legs look muscular And it was an erotic treasure for men. The girl's hobbled gate was supposed to tighten their vaginas. Let's just say I'm making that noise again

At least for the feet the bonsai trees like I said, they don't feel pain But they certainly will respond to it. So you're basically keeping that tree in a very stressed state its entire life It's like munchausen's my proxy where it's like it's your kid and you're like i'm gonna stunt your growth So you never leave. Oh god, that's exactly what it is. It's terrifying. Okay one last question. Okay jillian page. Jefferson wants to know Hi Just curious Are there any certain types of trees that produce more oxygen than other trees? I don't know. I don't know either. I do know that

You know, it's a chemical equation. So it's literally For x amount of carbon and sugar used you get an x amount of oxygen So it wouldn't be necessarily that one tree just produces more oxygen It's that one would um respire would make more photosynthesis. So some trees just Pump it out and then store the store the energy so you can like cut them down and they'll just keep growing back So those might be ones that probably produce more, but it's just because they're working over time It's not that they're actually producing more with less their same amount same equation. It's just One plus two equals three every single time. Okay. So

Yeah, probably so if you want to plant trees, you should probably consult like a local arborist and say, hey What's the best kind of plant? Yes, I completely concur. We touched on this a little bit But the last two questions I always ask are what is your least favorite thing about what you do What is the hardest part? What is the most annoying part? What's your least favorite? Yeah? I would say the hardest part is convincing people Um, and this is more hard like a challenge is convincing people to Understand trees and I don't want to say the way I understand trees But to at least give them a better appreciation of how the trees affect them

So a lot of people are like, oh, I got to cut down this tree or all this tree is dangerous And I'm like, well, no, it's not and here's why and explain it through and most of the time I get people who are just like, oh, okay, cool. I never knew that or I never thought about it that way But then I try to explain the benefits of trees and I'm like, hey When you go to work and you look out your window and you see this, you know Landscape with trees, maybe a pond grass that sort of thing and then you compare it. They've done studies on this This is I can confirm So I went and fact-checked this later and it's true. There are a bunch of studies done in different situations

All pretty much same outcome on the other side of the building where it's just a brick wall that they're looking at If you guys are doing the same job, you're getting paid the same the person with the view of the Landscape of the trees will have more production They will be more productive less stress and will be more satisfied with their job Really person on the other side will have less of those things all across the board And they've done all these studies and they say, well, you know If you are sitting in a hospital bed and you're recovering and you look out the window You see trees those people use less pain medication and recover faster than the same exact person same exact situation without that view

Oh my god There's this well known short story about two men in a hospital One is blind The other describes the scenes out the window to him turns out the window was just Overlooking a brick wall But his roommate made up these beautiful scenes to help the other guy I tried to look up the original author for this and I it can only be traced to a guy named harry bushman Harry bushman bushman super appropriate for a nature episode or perhaps harry bushman

Was a name adopted in the wild and crazy harry 1960s harry bushman So i'm trying to convince people my hey listen like you don't understand you cut down this tree I can tell you there's going to be physical effects. It's going to cost money first off Second off if you don't hire someone who knows what they're doing they could drop some part on your house or your car So pay for pay for good work. Number three you're going to have maybe uh more sun's going to hit it You're going to have more rain You're going to have now drainage problems because you don't have this huge thing pulling up water from the ground all the time But then on top of that you're going to have maybe less privacy

You're going to have less or more stress because things are going to be a little bit hotter You can see more pavement. There's going to be more direct lines that are harsh So there's all these like small micro things that really add up So the hardest part I think for me is to try and come out. It's not necessarily hard for me It depends on the audience is to convince someone. No, you don't want to cut down the tree and here's why Here's why it's doing a lot more good that you may not even know about But when you do the when you do the before and after you're going to be like, man, man I'm really stressed right now. It's like, have you been staring at pavement or you've been looking at a tree?

Oh, I forgot to ask one question. Well, how do you feel about Christmas trees? Christmas trees are fun. They're great I'll always have a real Christmas tree. You don't mind that they're getting cut. No, I'm not really no not in that regard Okay, because they're they're small and you know, if you're really comparing them You can just regrow another one in like five or eight years. Okay doesn't take that long I was going to go 50 50. I was like Casey's either gonna hate Christmas trees Or he's gonna love him. I did not know which side of the line you were gonna end up on that was a surprise to me I was like, I was like easily you could have been like Christmas trees are an abomination Everyone should have like a tumbleweed with some lights on it. I don't know. Okay. It seems reasonable

Yeah, but yeah, I like it and also if you think about all the other things, you know It's a rural or side of the world that grows Christmas trees. So you're supporting that economy buying a you know $25 noble fur or something like that. Okay. They try to make them perfect I hate that just let a tree grow cut it down put it in your house You got a tree I don't need to worry about making it perfect like, you know, pure middle shaped thing And you know sheer it to within an inch of its life ugly trees fine trees. Yeah, ugly trees are fine trees I just love in fact some of the coolest trees if any if you ever look up the bristle cone pines those old old trees

They are so gnarly like you're like, how are you even a thing? I'm gonna go deep into some tree porn later. Let's start looking up. I'm just gonna start Pinterest boarding a whole tree thing I actually have a book I call tree porn because It has a like long picture. It's called tree. I think is on it. This is very fancy and it has this Like literally like centerfolds of like tall redwoods and so I'm like leaning back. I'm like, oh, yeah That is that is a huge tree. It is like, oh my gosh, kasey get a room I'm like, no, no, no. I'm doing this right here on the couch. I'm looking at this tree It's hilarious on a dead tree. I know the irony is so

But I had to say it's a renewable resource. I saw it's a renewable resource Yeah, if it's done correctly logging is absolutely gonna save the world We're doing things right now with um trees. It's called cross laminated timber clt It is gonna be the future and I'm absolutely sure of this They're doing it in Germany We're just now in Oregon getting a couple mills on board to start doing it But basically think really thick plywood where you have boards going left and right Then you have them turn 90 degrees and they're going that direction

I mean, you're just doing this over and over and over till you get this big like six inch thick piece of uh panel And then you can cut that into whatever shape you want and put it together like legos Like literally there they said if you hear like hammers and nails on one of these sites where they're building this You know structure then something went wrong. Wow because they just sort of fit in together and then They're less fire resistance. This is the funniest thing. It's wood wait more fire resistance. Yes. Sorry more fire resistance. Sorry So this new type of lumber is too dense to burn Which is also a really good self deprecating way of deflecting an insult too dense to burn Now it's also what's called a carbon sink because it traps carbon dioxide and keeps it there

Which helps counter climate change and global warming which is necessary if we don't want to be swallowed by boiling oceans So it should be the future. I'm really looking forward to it. That's ideally that's really optimistic Because I wasn't sure what the future was going to be and this is good to know Oh, I hope it is I hope it is because if we can get it to the extent where almost all of our buildings are now timber framed again We can make sure that all of our trees are um grown properly and under certain conditions Wood is naturally good at moving so you don't have to worry about the tensile strength Everything's already built into the fiber itself and on top of that It's nicer to look at wood than it is cement. So it's kind of like this is so much more pleasant than I know anything else

Oh, I would so much rather have a wooden table than a glass one. Yeah, absolutely. It's so comfortable They're just so much nicer. Is this something warm? Yeah, hold me about it Yeah, it's like going into an old wood paneled cabin or something. It's like, ah, this is home Yeah, I can do this. Where's my pipe? It's like a big wooden womb. Yeah Just love it. Exactly. Oh, it's delightful Now to end on happy note. What is your very very favorite thing about what you do? I know that's gonna be hard for you. This is oh man But really it's looking at trees almost every single day

And most of them are all different trees or different situations of trees So I go out and I see a dogwood one day and I get to protect it from a development I'm like, nope. You have to retain this treats an awesome tree. You did it. That makes me go home so happy but then um Because of what I do and because of sort of who I am It's not necessarily part of my job Just part of my being I guess where I can go out and find these trees like, you know what today

I'm gonna go out to this part of the world or this part of Oregon and I'm gonna find these trees And drive out and this is huge long adventure Then you plop out in this little grove and there's this these Stunningly massive trees around you that have been completely untouched and protected from logging. So you're just like And like you're incredulous in how incredible these trees are so that not quite a part of my day-to-day job But that's my favorite thing where I get to go out and like find these cones and find these trees and be like Yes, I've been there. I've seen it. They're incredible. I know how they grow I've seen them like fall and die and grow up again

So that is probably the really nicest part The other nice part that I really like is actually just telling people about trees Like if I can just sit down like and do something like this and someone's like tell me about trees I'm just like Where to begin And then I can just do it for hours. So I think my favorite part is when someone's actively and Interestingly is listening to me. That's what I'm just like. They're they're taking this in. They like it. Okay. They're still here. All right One more hour one more slide. Let's just keep going when you found an ear to tree tails. Yeah, it's a happy day

This is just a happy day Yeah, and if I can convince someone that they don't want to cut down their tree If I can change that mind trees are incredible things and humans are way too hubristic in the idea I'm not even sure if that's a word, but I'm sure it is. Yes They think we think that we know better than the trees or better than the ecosystem that's been developed over millions of years When someone's like, oh, what should I do to make this tree healthy? Like my answer is like let it grow the only reason that we prune trees is because of us trees don't need help Yeah trees know what's up. Oh exactly excuse me. Yeah, if I've been evolving for millions of years

Yes, it's like How dare you? How long have you been here kiddo? So then this is one of my old bosses said all the time He's like there's no reason to prune a tree other than human reasons to prune a tree They will do it themselves if they have to or they will fall apart and die and then another tree's gonna take its place That's called the circle of life. That's how it goes. Speaking of circle of life. Yeah one more morbid question Let's go for it When you died, do you want to be planted in one of those tree pots? Oh, yeah, totally I don't know anything about it, but the answer is yes

I would love that I would love a natural burial where they don't involve me or don't put me in like a box or anything like that They do make it like a Alder box so it decays in like 30 seconds Okay, put me in the ground and then plant a tree right on top so that I can at some point Everyone else in the world would be like casey became that tree Oh, you're gonna become a tree. I love that. I mean hopefully not any time soon like in another like the long time Fingers crossed

All the trees I planted in my life, please please But yeah, that would be that would be so nice to uh, you know, obviously I wouldn't be thinking about it then But to know that my you know individual cells my molecules have literally been transformed into something else Yep, I don't think that I've ever met anyone is enthusiastic about trees. Yes That's when so far. I haven't met anyone either. Maybe a couple people but yeah, at least I can give them a good run for their money So thank you. I'm happy to hear that. Thank you so much. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Thanks for having me. This is wonderful This world to continue to bask in casey's infectious tree enthusiasm You can see his brand new

Seedling of an instagram account, which I have encouraged and half just straight up pressured him to start He said he was going to start it anyway, and I just said listen dude do it before Tuesday You can follow him on instagram at clap for trees C l a p p For the number four trees. It's a brand new account. It's so exciting. So you can find him there I'll also put a link in the show notes So oligies is on instagram and twitter at oligies and i'm on both at ellie ward with one l And there's a group full of very warm

Curious folks at oligies podcast on facebook. Thank you. Hannah lipo and erin talbert for admitting You can also obtain oligies objects at oligiesmerch.com. There are pins. There are dad hats shirts Totes, so we've got phone cases We got it sales support the making of the podcast Thanks, shannon feltas and bonnie dutch for helping run that you guys rule And thank you always to steven ray morris for editing. This was a beast of an episode I usually have between 14 to 25 asides and this one had 40 And he charges me by the hour

So thank you to all the patrons at patreon.com for essentially paying him and for submitting such a great questions Asking smart people dumb questions is literally the only way anyone learns Anything in life and if you think your question is dumb I guarantee like 12 other people want to ask it and they're going to be thankful that you did You can become a patron for as little as a dollar a month and that supports the show So if it's worth the price of a sandwich per year or whatever Consider it you get to ask your questions and see behind the scenes pictures and videos and such Now the music was written by nick thorburn of the band islands, which is a very nice band

And now if you stick it out to the very end, you know, I tell you a secret and this week It's that I never learned how to type Even though I have been a professional writer for like The decade I skipped that elective in high school. So my hands When I write just hover in weird places on the keyboard Sometimes just a pointer finger And I'm pretty fast, but I make a ton of typos

I make so many mistakes and I get so embarrassed when Stephen Ray Morris is working in the same google transcript document And there's just so many red underlines. It's just like red lasagna noodles all over it It wasn't until a year ago that I learned why keyboards have those weird knobs on the f and the j keys. I just thought they were like Weird mistakes on all keyboards So I downloaded a learn to type program I only got a few lessons in and I need to dedicate some time to it because I type like a t-rex trying to operate a spaceship Okay, bye