Ologies with Alie Ward - Smologies #42: TREES with J. Casey Clapp

Episode Date: April 13, 2024

Do trees have feelings? How do they talk? Which trees can you use to make syrup? Do bananas really grow on trees? Possibly the world's most enthusiastic tree expert, J. Casey Clapp, explains what makes coastal redwoods the coolest trees, how roots communicate with each other, and why a tree is like a cup of tea. Plus: bonus guest appearance by our friends (and the trees’), fungi.  Follow Casey Clapp on InstagramListen to his podcast, Completely Arbortrary: https://linktr.ee/arbortrarypod/A donation went to EcoTrust.orgFull-length (*not* G-rated) Dendrology episode + tons of science linksMore kid-friendly Smologies episodes!Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, masks, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramSound editing by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Productions and Steven Ray MorrisMade possible by work from Noel Dilworth, Susan Hale, Kelly R. Dwyer, Emily White, & Erin TalbertSmologies theme song by Harold Malcolm

Oh, hey, this is a Smologies episode. And what Smologies are, they are safe for kids. They're G rated. We cut them down so they're much shorter. Nobody swears in them. If you want the full length adult version with more details and more swearing, that is linked right in the show notes. But for your carpool, for your classroom, here you go. Smologies, let's have it. Are you ready?

OK, this episode will make you so pumped about trees. You're going to 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. 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. 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? Does he have a favorite tree? So I'm gonna go out on a lamb and say, this is a great episode, so stick around for some really wonderful tree facts, will ya? Lumber up, I swear to God. That's gonna be the last tree pun. Please trust me. For a person who is somewhat in denial about being a dendrologist, Casey Clapp. I've never done anything like this before.

Yay! That's gonna be great. So this is your mic. Thank you. Okay, so I have a question. Yes, go ahead. Arborist versus dendrologist, 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 going to cut a tree, remove a tree, plant trees, they're the ones who 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 going to study this plant, its characteristics, or this tree more specifically, its characteristics and where it fits in with the rest of all the other trees in the world. So dendrologists 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 so. 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% of people say willows or something like that. Really? It's really strange.

No one thinks about it 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, Casey'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, what do they 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. I love it. Anyway, coastal redwoods, Casey's favorite tree. I love it. Anyway, Coastal Redwoods, Casey's favorite tree.

They're just the bomber trees. They are rot 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 but leave 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, 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? For a redwood, you cut it down at the base, and the roots just shoot up all these new sprouts. You're like, oh, the tree still lives. This is great. The roots are like, I don't care. I'm going to go ahead. Exactly. The world is just most bomber trees. if you haven't been there, you should go. They're just

There's nothing like in the world. Quick anatomy lesson of trees. 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 canopy. Mediokrly 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. 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 Joshua tree. That's technically a yucca. It doesn't put on annual rings the same way the redwood or an oakwood. 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. Not necessarily. It's

probably not that easy. But they're just big, big cells and basically just large herbs, just like a pasta or anything else. Yeah. So there's no actual woody parts in them. So we still call them trees. So if we have a tree and we say, okay, it's going to a woody thing, let's just use the Oregon white oak, for example. 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 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. The roots of a tree generally, at least in the Pacific Northwest and in our more temperate regions, this is going to blow so many minds, they're only in the top two to three feet of soil. What? That's it. That's it? Even the big guys?

Even the big guys. Yeah. So if you ever are looking 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 going to get past four feet anywhere. That's crazy. I always thought they went way down. Yeah, they go out. 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 would be the best way to imagine it. And so, that's why roots are so important. People are like, oh, it's not that... They go down. You're like, no, no, no, no. People think it's that mirror image, and it's definitely not. Oh, yeah.

Because I feel like you do see that kind of mirror image. Oh, yeah. Oh my God, I have no idea. Okay, so that's the not. Host, I feel like you do see that kind of mirror image. Oh, yeah. Oh my God, I have no idea. OK, 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. If you cut off one of their branches, they will just close it off and keep moving, just

like compartments in a ship. All you have to do is close it off, and then everything else can go on as normal. 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. It's X-Y-L-E-M. If you can fit that in on a triple word score with that X, man, you're killing it. You're really doing well.

Okay, buckle up because this part's gonna get a little technical, but you're gonna learn a few new Scrabble words as promised and or names for your organic children. Cambium, phloem, photosynth, and xylem, of course, which is Greek for wood. And yes, that is where the word xylophone comes from. So Scrabble, Jeopardy, you're prepped for anything. Okay, back to xylem. It 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 their nutrients, 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.

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 is 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, eh, there's too much energy I'm putting in and not getting enough back. So they just cut it off. 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. Like nothing ever happened because everything else is going on around the tree itself and the wood is actually basically inert. It's just a physical structure holding the tree itself. And the wood is actually basically inert. 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. Talk to me a little bit about how trees talk to each other because I feel like there was some research or something came out recently about how trees can talk to each other through their roots and everyone was like, what? So how do the roots communicate? Do they share nutrients? Do they talk to each other? What's happening under the surface? This is so fascinating. So the book you're talking about is called The Hidden Life of Trees, I think. Okay. All right. I looked this up 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. So it 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? The hidden life of plants is they graft themselves together. If you have really, really thin bark on those root hairs, and those root hairs touch each

other, and then the cambium layer connects, and you can get an entire forest of all these trees connected, which is fascinating. But then there's a sublayer on that, which is mushrooms. Mycelium. This is the new thing that really blew up. Radiolab did a whole thing on it, and everyone was like, mushrooms, what, trees? Basically, what they do is, all these fungus have this mutualistic relationship. It's called symbiosis. 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 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 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. So what they do, 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 as soon as the trees have 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 area. I have more questions. I hope you're not, are you late for anything? No, I literally have nothing. Okay, good. Because people have questions. Um, hold on. People have questions? I guess. This is so exciting. I know. Okay, wait. I could do this all night. All right. So when this episode first aired in 2018, we did not have a single sponsor yet. We just had wonderful folks

at patreon.com slash ologies who have kept this show afloat since day one. But now that we do have some ads, we can donate to a cause of the ologist's choosing. And this week, I don't know who Casey chose because I forgot to ask him and I texted him a few hours ago, but he has not come back to me because he's probably wearing a parka in a forest. And I'm going to update the link in the show notes as soon as I know, but I'm sure it will be cool and leafy and deserving. So money going to a charity, TBA.

Thanks to the following sponsors. Okay, let's bark up his tree with some questions. Beth Frosto wants to know, do trees feel pain when we trim them? They do, but not in a strict sense. So the pain isn't so much that they are like, ow, they're more because they're compartmentalizers. All that does is create a reaction that says, oh, I need to protect myself. Something may get in. Either it's going to get an insect that is

going to come in, or it's going to be a fungus, or both, or a multitude of other things. 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. They'll respond immediately, especially by the next year. They will put on new wood to cover over it. It puts in these three walls of chemical protection, then grows a fourth wall of wood over the top to seal over that wound. Southwick & Brinsfield That never happened. Cross-Terms Exactly. It never happened.

Anytime you cut a tree and then it starts starts pushing out sap, A, 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, man! 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. So they have plenty of stored nutrients and stored sugars and all these things. 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. There's a tree called a sweet gum, for all you nerds, that is liquid amber cirrhesiflua. Wonderful, wonderful tree. What they do is, you use to tap them. That's why they call it sweet gum, because they would

tap them in the south, and then they would 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 that 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 it, 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. 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 pocketful 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 tears,

but they tap a bunch of them, they get just a little bit from everyone, so don't be too sad. You can continue to brunch unencumbered by guilt. Radhika Vikaria has a question. Why do some trees lose their leaves in the winter and others don't? Aha, I love this question.

So this comes down to a specific, basically a strategy. So if you think of trees as having a budget, one part of their budget goes towards 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 be towards reproduction because there's no point in growing unless you can reproduce. The third part, the third big part, would go towards 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 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. 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 wintertime, or 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, it's really bad when leaves and tissues like that freeze. Just the same as if we our fingers froze. So for some trees, what worked 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 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 right off the bat. They would be 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. So it's just more of a balance of which is more functionable for this tree at the right time. So it's more just about favorable conditions than it is about climate. It really depends on what's best for the tree. Yeah, most of the time. And obviously climate has something to do with it.

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. 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 living thing uses respiration to breathe and that's why we breathe

out carbon dioxide and water. Trees do the exact opposite. They 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.

Snacking. 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 that we could do a thousand more hours of talking about. Do you think there are certain trees, Josh, Bruce wants to know, are there certain trees that are better for the environment than others? Yeah, I would say so. 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 cities it's warmer temperatures than in the associated cropland or forest land. It's just cooler out there and warmer in here. That's because we have so many impervious services that are taking in heat and then bouncing it back out. If we have a big tree that's growing over the top of that, then we're shading out that area. If we do that over the scale of the entire United States, then all of a sudden we're losing millions of tons of carbon just by having one tree shade in 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 always going to be great. Hostess Now to end on a happy note, what is your very, very favorite thing about what you do? I know that's going to be hard for you. Dr. Ben Dr. Jon Sears Oh, man. 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 tree. It's an awesome tree. You did it. That makes me go home so happy. The other nice part that I really like is actually just telling people about trees. If I can just sit down 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 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 in interestingly is listening to me that's what I'm just like they're taking this in they like it okay they're still here all right I need one more hour one more slide let's just keep going I don't think that I've ever met anyone is enthusiastic about trees yes that's when so far I haven ever met anyone as enthusiastic about trees. Yes. That's perfect. 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. To continue to bask in Casey's infectious tree enthusiasm, you can follow him on Instagram at clap4trees, C-L-A-P-P-4, the number four, Trees. Ologies is on Instagram and Twitter at Ologies and I'm on both at Alley Ward with 1L. Also linked is AlleyWard.com slash Smologies which has dozens more kids safe and shorter episodes you can blaze through and thank you Mercedes Maitland of Maitland audio for editing those And since we like to keep things small around here the rest of the credits are in the show notes And if you stick around to the end of the episode, you know

I'll give you a piece of advice and this piece of advice helps me remember people's names if someone introduces themselves Number one, it's a good idea to remember to listen to what their name is or Or if you didn't say, I'm sorry, what was that? But then to remember their names, I immediately think of someone else with the same name to associate them with. So our editor, her name is Mercedes. If I just met her, I might think, okay, like the car Mercedes. That way when I look at her, I go, like the car Mercedes. Or if I meet someone named Dorothy, I may think, oh, Dorothy, like the Wizard of Oz. Okay, that way I'm not like, is it Donna? What was it? So try to think of someone else or something else with the same name.

That way you can associate it with that person and then you remember their name. This is also a fun trick. If you meet a lot of people at once, cause people are going to be like, Whoa, you remembered more names than is typical. And you go, ha ha, I got a little trick. Anyway, I hope that helps. All right. bye bye. Smologies. Smologies. Smologies. Smologies. Smologies. Smologies.