31–40 of 117 posts
I think a bigger issue is healthy trees being cut in a lot of urban areas. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5801627/Great-tree-... Reference to UK, but I can see the same happening in Ireland and Portugal.
There is an informative chapter/section called Street Kids about trees planted along the streets primarily in urban areas. How their health is impacted by having no network of close cousins nearby to communicate/ suppy nutrients via root/fungi, etc.
https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Life-Trees-Illustrated/dp/1771...
Civilization is an affront to nature -- it's amazing how few of us understand this.
We try to separate humans from other organisms because our use of tools/building nests is so far advanced from say, what an ant produces, or a bird making a nest, or a monkey with a stick.
But we're no different from those organisms in terms of tools and nesting, we're just really good at what we do. You could argue humans are different in that we possess self-awareness but that's an entirely different debate.
And then there's the "but what about our effect on the planet?" debate. What about it? Some say the effect we have isn't natural. But even that only has weight depending on what you mean by "natural". It's natural for humans to terraform and move earth the way we see fit. At the moment we're at risk of going extinct because of it, but the jury isn't out that we won't use technology to once again survive.
contamination,
jailed roots
and the social pressure to constant prune and mow until killing the tree.
Good luck trying to find a sanctuary protected in the next 400 years for a fully fledged oak in the middle of a city.
I wonder if urban trees will adapt to city life - but I guess it depends on where the cities get their new trees. If it's not from the city's tree gene pool we will put forest trees into cities and they won't far any better 200 years from now.
The idea that we would use random natural selection for urban trees feels archaic. We don't use natural selection for our crops or livestock or much of anything any more. Urban trees will almost assuredly, like all of the other lifeforms we grow and rely on, be altered through human selection (be it simple old techniques like cross breeding, or advanced techniques like genetic modification) i.e. https://en.wikipedia.…
I will admit it's handy when planting on my eighth acre to know ahead of time how big a tree will get, for example.
I think a bigger issue is healthy trees being cut in a lot of urban areas. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5801627/Great-tree-... Reference to UK, but I can see the same happening in Ireland and Portugal.
> Thousands of trees in the city, assessed by the contractor Amey as dying, diseased or dangerous, have been axed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this a joke? Life expectancy has been increasing as people left the countryside for the cities. It's not even a matter of debate.
It's only relatively recently that cities began to have higher life expectancies than the countryside. Last 200 years or so, IIRC.
I highly recommend reading the book "The Hidden Life Of Trees" by Peter Wohlleben There is an informative chapter/section called Street Kids about trees planted along the streets primarily in urban areas. How their health is impacted by having no network of close cousins nearby to communicate/ suppy nutrients via root/fungi, etc. https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Life-Trees-Illustrated/dp/1771...
* No network of fellow of trees to share nutrients and information with via their roots, as mentioned above.
* Dogs constantly pissing on the trunk.
* Smog.
* Planted in a small patch of dirt, surrounded by concrete. The dirt itself is usually extremely compacted so no water gets through to the roots.
* Gardeners and city workers constantly cutting off branches, exposing inner wood to deadly fungi.
Live fast, die young, and leave a good looking copse.