Take a Hike

[Odds]

Even in midsummer, the ancient hazelwoods on the Hebridean island of Seil are cool and quiet. Countless slanted stems of hazel support a thick canopy, which blots out the sun and blankets everything below in a sort of “fairytale darkness”, says Bethan Manley, a biologist at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. Scientists can date when those forests sprang up across the west coast of Britain and Ireland, says Satori, because “about 10,000 years ago, you have a massive spike in hazel pollen”. Scottish lichenologists have estimated these particular woodlands might have been around since 7,500BC.

These ancient woods are home to peculiar fungi, including the glue crust fungus that sticks together hazel branches, and the parasitic “hazel gloves” that grow out of them. Here, the researchers aim to understand how fungal communities could be key to regrowing Britain’s lost hazelwoods, one part of a global mission to map the forgotten subterranean half of our planet’s forests.

Fungi are the secret ingredient to restoring the world's forests.

 

[Odds]

It is easy to see tree-influence in the shape of human bodies. But trees are chemical manipulators above all, using sun and time and carbon to make incredibly complex compounds, which are finely tuned through evolution to domesticate people. The cacao tree does so using theobromine, the active ingredient and distinctive taste in chocolate. Theobromine, like cocaine, caffeine and nicotine, has a mild but pleasurable effect on the nervous system, which makes it irresistible to primates. They get a psychoactive high, which allows them to swing through the canopy for miles.

This is an essential trick for a tree that can only grow in specific niches that are scattered about the forest, often far from another of the same species. Ruthlessly, the trees select for larger monkeys able to travel further distances by using the toxicity of theobromine: just as chocolate can kill dogs, so too can a large dose knock off a small monkey. The trees grow large, heavy pods that can develop without breaking branches on the parts of the tree that can support the weight of larger monkeys. These large monkeys can eat the pods and turn the very high fat content of cocoa butter into the physical energy required to travel long distances, and the theobromine hit into mental energy to spread the seeds.

Here, the tree uses extraordinary powers of chemical synthesis to manipulate animals it will use to travel. Chemically, physically and existentially, animals have been shaped by trees, and few have been more shaped by trees than humans. Whole societies have arranged themselves around trees. The striking relationship between the cacao tree and monkeys appears to have been seamlessly transferred into humans, even though our genetic paths parted from them 5m years ago. As a result of cacao domesticating humans, cacao trees currently grow everywhere in the world where they can survive, from south-east Mexico to the Philippines, Ivory Coast, Angola and India, and we plant them, nurse them and consistently destroy their competition and pathogens.

The genius of trees @ the Guardian

My question is: how does the tree know this?

Without eyes to see or ears to hear the environment around them, how can a tree possibly be aware of the monkey's addiction to cacao and the ensuing affect it has on the punky primate? What manner of awareness is a tree using to develop a survival strategy both simple in its design yet complex in the affects in the world abroad?

 

[Odds]

One of my 242-times removed ancestors enjoying a post-prandial nap...no coincidence, then, that a cup of hot chocolate is just the job for a good nights sleep.