Speaker 1: Oh hey, this is asmology's episode, and what somologies are.
Speaker 1: They are safe for kids, they're g rated. We cut
Speaker 1: them down so they're much shorter, nobody swears in them.
Speaker 1: If you want the full length adult version with more
Speaker 1: details and more swearing, that is linked right in the
Speaker 1: show notes. But for your carpool, for your classroom, here
Speaker 1: you go, smologies, let's have it.
Speaker 2: Are you ready? Okay?
Speaker 1: This episode will make you so pumped about trees. You're
Speaker 1: gonna be bummed about having skin and blood.
Speaker 2: You'rearing me so jealous of.
Speaker 1: Bark and sap, and you'll have new scrabble words and
Speaker 1: you'll start questioning if you should just string a hammock
Speaker 1: up in the backyard and live outside like a big
Speaker 1: ape squirrel. Okay, the trees, you're ready for trees? Okay,
Speaker 1: So dendro comes from the old Greek meaning tree. And
Speaker 1: if you're like that, why does that remind me of
Speaker 1: brain stuff? Well, that's because the dendrite is a part
Speaker 1: of a nerve cell that looks a lot like a tree.
Speaker 2: So dendra. There you go. Trees.
Speaker 1: So you've got trees in the brain. You're gonna have
Speaker 1: trees on the brain after this I'll tell you that much.
Speaker 1: You're going to be pining for more arborist facts. Oka,
Speaker 1: So the term dendrologist is a little funky. So technically
Speaker 1: it's anyone who studies trees, which this human being I
Speaker 1: interviewed has done. I have never met anyone with such
Speaker 1: a raw zeal or deep knowledge for and of trees.
Speaker 2: You will love him.
Speaker 1: So we talked for literally two hours, which was very
Speaker 1: difficult to cut down. No tree pun intended about so
Speaker 1: many burning curiosities. Do trees feel pain? How do they
Speaker 1: talk to each other? Does he have a favorite tree?
Speaker 1: So I'm going to go out on a lamb and say, is.
Speaker 2: The great episode?
Speaker 1: So stick around for some really wonderful tree facts.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, lumber up.
Speaker 1: I swear to God that's gonna be the last tree pun.
Speaker 1: Please trust me. For a person who is somewhat in
Speaker 1: denial about being a dendrologist, Casey Clapp, muggy.
Speaker 4: Cheese, I've never done anything like this.
Speaker 3: Yay, that's gonna be great. So this is your mic,
Speaker 3: Like you're okay?
Speaker 1: So I have a question, Yes, go ahead, arborist versus dendrologists?
Speaker 2: Yes, what's the difference?
Speaker 4: So an arborist specifically focuses on trees in the urban area,
Speaker 4: but most of the time and Arbius is the one
Speaker 4: who manages a tree in the urban area. So if
Speaker 4: they're going to cut a tree, remove a tree, plant trees,
Speaker 4: they're the ones usually have something to do with it.
Speaker 4: But then a dendrologist is usually someone that's more on
Speaker 4: the research side of the world, and they're like, Okay,
Speaker 4: we're gonna study this plant it's characteristics, or this tree
Speaker 4: more specifically, it's characteristics and where it fits in with
Speaker 4: the rest of all the other trees in the world.
Speaker 4: So dendrologists basically work on the back end of things,
Speaker 4: classifying and all the different trees into certain organizational standards.
Speaker 1: So can you call if you study and you love trees,
Speaker 1: can you call yourself a dendrologist?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say, I would say, so, do you
Speaker 3: have a favorite tree?
Speaker 4: I do, yeah, but it changes pretty constantly.
Speaker 2: What is it now?
Speaker 4: Right now, it would be the coast redwood, which is
Speaker 4: so stereotypical.
Speaker 3: I know, why is that stereotypical? It's a majestic tree.
Speaker 4: I completely concur But people have generally said, like they
Speaker 4: come up with the first thing that comes to them
Speaker 4: so a lot of times when I ask people, they're like, oh, willows.
Speaker 4: I'm like cool. Eighty percent people say willows or something. Really,
Speaker 4: it's really strange no one thinks about until you ask
Speaker 4: them the question.
Speaker 3: Do you know what your favorite tree is? I was like,
Speaker 3: do I have a favorite?
Speaker 1: Yes? I do. It's an oak. I have a favorite tree.
Speaker 1: I guess we all do. But coastal redwoods Casey's favorite.
Speaker 1: They grow from southern Oregon, just down the central coast
Speaker 1: of California all the way down to about Santa Cruz.
Speaker 1: And they grow in this fog belt right near the
Speaker 1: shore because that fog helps get moisture to the top
Speaker 1: of these like three hundred fifty foot giant trees. And
Speaker 1: if you're needing to imagine a silhouette of one, you're like,
Speaker 1: what do they look like? You know the logo for Stanford, Okay,
Speaker 1: Well that there is the image of El Palo Alto,
Speaker 1: one particularly famous local coastal redwood tree. It's also the
Speaker 1: unofficial mascot of Stanford. It's dubbed very creatively the tree.
Speaker 1: I love it anyway. Coastal Redwood's Casey's favorite tree.
Speaker 4: They're just they're just the bomber trees. They are rot resistant,
Speaker 4: so almost no funguses affect them. They are insect resistant,
Speaker 4: so insects don't get into them, they don't eat the foliage,
Speaker 4: they don't get into the bark. Their bark is like
Speaker 4: literally feet thick, and it's fire resistant, so nothing can
Speaker 4: penetrate it. Fire doesn't burn it. Sometimes fire will actually
Speaker 4: hollow out the inside of the tree belave the bark alone.
Speaker 4: But then the trees actually survive because they can sprout
Speaker 4: from any place that still has functionality down to the roots.
Speaker 4: So not only are they also the tallest trees in
Speaker 4: the world, some of the longest lived, some of the
Speaker 4: biggest in terms of volume. Then on top of that,
Speaker 4: they basically can outlive anything. They don't have any more predators,
Speaker 4: and they can sprout. Most conifers can't do that. If
Speaker 4: you cut them down at the base, they're done. They're ended,
Speaker 4: really on it. For a redwood, you cut it down
Speaker 4: at the base and the roots just shoot up all
Speaker 4: these new sprouts and you're like, oh, the tree still lives,
Speaker 4: this is great.
Speaker 3: The roots are like, I don't care, I'm going I'm
Speaker 3: gonna go ahead exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So they're just there are the world's just most
Speaker 4: bomber trees, and if you haven't been there, you should go.
Speaker 4: They're just there's nothing like in the world.
Speaker 1: Quick anatomy lesson of trees. Oh okay, what are we
Speaker 1: dealing with?
Speaker 3: And also true or false? The root system is.
Speaker 1: Like kind of as big as the actual branches.
Speaker 4: And cannon mightiocrely both.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, so give me an anatomy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sort of both, okay, So real quick, there are
Speaker 4: four main organs of a tree. First off, what is
Speaker 4: a tree. A tree, by some definitions is literally like
Speaker 4: this one guy on a book I have, He describes
Speaker 4: it as a bush with a stick up the middle.
Speaker 4: So that's what we will define as a tree. The
Speaker 4: things that you know of as a tree are a tree.
Speaker 4: But then there's things like say Joshua tree that's technically
Speaker 4: a yucka. It doesn't put on annual rings the same
Speaker 4: way the redwood or an oak wood. Then there is
Speaker 4: banana trees. Banana trees are actually just cells. There's no
Speaker 4: woodiness to them. You can go over and knock them
Speaker 4: over if you really want, really not necessarily it's probably
Speaker 4: not that easy, but they're just big, big cells. Basically
Speaker 4: just large herbs, just like a hosta or anything else. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so there's no actual woody parts in them. So what
Speaker 4: we still call them trees. So if we have a
Speaker 4: tree and we say, okay, it's gonna woody thing, let's
Speaker 4: just use the Oregon white oak for example. Okay, so
Speaker 4: the Oregon white oak one usually has a single stem,
Speaker 4: comes out, has this big, nice, beautiful globe like crown.
Speaker 4: So there's four main organs. You have the roots, you
Speaker 4: have the stem and the branches. Then you have the
Speaker 4: flowering parts, and you have the leaves. Those are the
Speaker 4: four things that you would call organs in a tree,
Speaker 4: just for simplicity's sake. Four main organs. Okay, so the
Speaker 4: roots of a tree generally, at least in the Pacific
Speaker 4: Northwest and in are more temperate regions, this is gonna
Speaker 4: blow so many mines. They're only in the top two
Speaker 4: to three feet of soil. What that's it. That's it,
Speaker 4: even even the big guys. Yeah. So if you ever
Speaker 4: are looking at a tree, you go out in to
Speaker 4: the woods and you see a tree that's toppled over
Speaker 4: and it's picked up its entire root ball. If you
Speaker 4: measure from the top of that down to the very
Speaker 4: lowest route. You're not going to get past four feet anywhere.
Speaker 2: Crazy.
Speaker 3: I always thought they went way down and go out.
Speaker 4: They go out. But basically you have imagine a wine glass.
Speaker 3: Or a like an umbrella that has a base.
Speaker 4: Exactly an umbrella is sitting on a platter. Would be
Speaker 4: the best way to imagine it. And so that's why
Speaker 4: roots are so important. People like, oh, that's it's not that,
Speaker 4: you know, they go down. You're like, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: it doesn't. People think it's that mirror image, and it's
Speaker 4: definitely not.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, because I feel like you do see that
Speaker 1: kind of like mirror image.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Oh my god, I had no idea.
Speaker 2: Okay, So that's the anatomy of a tree.
Speaker 4: Really, well, there's one extra step. So this is the
Speaker 4: next most important thing. Trees are compartmentalizers, so if you
Speaker 4: cut off one of their branches, they will just close
Speaker 4: it off and keep moving, just like a compartments in
Speaker 4: a ship. All you have to do is off and
Speaker 4: then everything else can go on as normal. So they
Speaker 4: have these two main things. You have cambium layer, which
Speaker 4: is the vascular system of the tree just below the bark,
Speaker 4: just outside the wood. That's where the trees grow and
Speaker 4: put on their new rings. That is where they send
Speaker 4: nutrients and water from the ground up, and that's called
Speaker 4: the xylum. That's a good word. If you play scrabble,
Speaker 4: it's x y.
Speaker 2: L E M.
Speaker 4: You can fit that in on a triple word score
Speaker 4: with that X. Man, you're killing it. You're really doing well.
Speaker 1: Okay, buckle up because this parts can get a little technical,
Speaker 1: but you're gonna learn a few new scrabble words as promised,
Speaker 1: and or names for your organic children. Cambium, flow them,
Speaker 1: photosynth and xylum of course, which is Greek for wood.
Speaker 1: And yes, that is where the word xylophone comes from.
Speaker 1: So Scrabble jeopardy your prep for anything. Okay, back to xylum.
Speaker 4: It takes all the nutrients and water up to all
Speaker 4: the leaves. The leaves they are doing the photosynthesis, so
Speaker 4: they're creating the energy from the sun. They start pulling
Speaker 4: all of their nutrients, are all their photosynthate is some
Speaker 4: people call it basically sugars, and they pull those down
Speaker 4: and that goes to the floam, which is the pipes
Speaker 4: that go down and that's basically it. Oh tree roots
Speaker 4: pull things up through the stem and then puts things
Speaker 4: out to the leaves. The leaves are the factory. They
Speaker 4: create all the food. Then they put that down and
Speaker 4: distribute it out to the rest of the tree.
Speaker 1: Ooh, are you ready for a hot tree scandal? Okay,
Speaker 1: Sometimes a tree breaks up with its own limbs.
Speaker 3: Is this drama.
Speaker 4: Many times, if there is competition, it actually cuts it
Speaker 4: off itself. If they are growing to limb out directly
Speaker 4: to another tree, they get shaded out. They're like, Eah,
Speaker 4: this's too much energy I'm putting in and not getting
Speaker 4: enough back. So they just cut it off. The trees
Speaker 4: no longer feed. It literally close the compartment off to
Speaker 4: that branch. That branch slowly dies, slowly dies, and then
Speaker 4: as soon as it falls off, maybe a crow lands
Speaker 4: on it and it's so decayed, just topples to the ground.
Speaker 4: Then the tree then seals over that wound. Trees don't heal.
Speaker 4: They seal. They specifically close it up and then continue
Speaker 4: to grow like nothing ever happened.
Speaker 3: It's like ghosting your own arm.
Speaker 4: Exactly like nothing ever happened, because everything else is going
Speaker 4: on around the tree itself, and the wood is actually
Speaker 4: basically a inert it's just a physical structure holding the
Speaker 4: tree up.
Speaker 1: Okay, remember the cambium layer from earlier. So as we recorded,
Speaker 1: we were both drinking tea rated from my hotel Mini bar,
Speaker 1: and Casey had a visual metaphor for the cambium layer,
Speaker 1: which really helped. He said, if you're looking at a
Speaker 1: full coffee cup, the coffee inside would be the wood,
Speaker 1: the mug would be the cambium layer, and the outside
Speaker 1: of the mug would be the bark. Do that makes sense?
Speaker 3: So the cambium layer.
Speaker 1: Is like super important in terms of keeping a tree alive.
Speaker 1: Talk to me a little bit about how trees talk
Speaker 1: to each other, because I feel like there was some
Speaker 1: some researcher something came out recently about how trees can
Speaker 1: talk to each other through their roots, and everyone was.
Speaker 3: Like, wa, So how do the roots communicate? Do they
Speaker 3: share nutrients? Do they talk to each other? What's happening
Speaker 3: under the surface.
Speaker 4: Oh, this is so fascinating. So the book you're talking
Speaker 4: about is called The Hidden Life of Trees.
Speaker 2: Okay, I think, all right.
Speaker 1: I look this up and one author, the German Peter
Speaker 1: horn Been I don't know, describes that trees feed each
Speaker 1: other other sugars through their roots when one is sick
Speaker 1: or dying, and they communicate to each other using chemical
Speaker 1: and electrical cues in response to stimulus, not unlike how
Speaker 1: humans use vocal cues to say, hey, fools, there are
Speaker 1: donuts in the breakroom.
Speaker 4: So it's really comes down to when we communicate as people.
Speaker 4: I say something to you, there's no physical connection between us.
Speaker 4: I just say something and you hear and then you
Speaker 4: act on it. A tree, everything is a stimulus that
Speaker 4: comes from something. So all the roots, if it's the
Speaker 4: same species, their roots can graft together. What Yeah, it's
Speaker 4: kind of mind blowing, But what's going on underneath the
Speaker 4: soil sort of the hidden life of plants is they
Speaker 4: graft themselves together. So if you have really really thin
Speaker 4: bark on those root hairs and those root hairs touch
Speaker 4: each other, and then the cambium layer sort of connects
Speaker 4: and you can get an entire forest of all these
Speaker 4: trees connected, which is fast. But then there's a sub
Speaker 4: layer on that which is mushrooms. Okay, my celium. This
Speaker 4: is the new thing that really like blew up, Like
Speaker 4: Radio Lab did a whole thing on it, and everyone's like, ah,
Speaker 4: mushrooms what trees. So basically what they do is all
Speaker 4: these fungus have this mutualistic relationships called symbiosis. And what
Speaker 4: they do is a fungus has root hairs or myceelium
Speaker 4: that's microscopic, much smaller than the root hairs of a tree.
Speaker 4: So if you are a tree growing in a place
Speaker 4: like let's say southern Oregon, then you have a much
Speaker 4: drier condition. Tree roots are a certain size, maybe like
Speaker 4: the size of your finger for this instance, and so
Speaker 4: you're like, oh, man, I can only reach into a
Speaker 4: certain size crack where this water is. And the water
Speaker 4: is held up within these smaller pores in the soil.
Speaker 4: So if the trees can't physically get their roots into
Speaker 4: grab it, then it's basically not available. So this fungus
Speaker 4: ends up getting this mutualistic relationship. The tree gives the
Speaker 4: fungus sugars that it produces up in the canopy, so
Speaker 4: the fungus gets some food. And then the fungus, if
Speaker 4: our fingers are the size of root hairs, then our hair,
Speaker 4: our actual physical hair is something on the size of
Speaker 4: the fungus. So the fungus can be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: I can go in and grab that water, and so
Speaker 4: the fungus goes in and basically creates like a whole
Speaker 4: second level of roots for this tree. And the way
Speaker 4: you can tell if a tree needs water, this is great.
Speaker 4: It's kind of like a straw where on the very
Speaker 4: tippy top you have evaporation. Evapo transpiration, evapotransporration is just
Speaker 4: literally the process of water going from the ground through
Speaker 4: a plant or a tree out to the air. Okay,
Speaker 4: so what they do it grab some water, do some photosynthesis,
Speaker 4: or do whatever they do, and then some water escapes.
Speaker 4: So when that water is released into the atmosphere, just
Speaker 4: like you're drinking out of a straw, one molecule pulls on,
Speaker 4: the next, pulls on the next, pulls on the next,
Speaker 4: using capillary action all the way down the tubes of
Speaker 4: the tree to the soil into the roots, and then
Speaker 4: all of a sudden, that root is pulling up another
Speaker 4: little molecule of water and you can have full cycle.
Speaker 4: So as soon as the trees have this pressure deficit
Speaker 4: where it's sucking more water into the air than it
Speaker 4: has in the ground, the fungus will then be like,
Speaker 4: oh wow, there's a pressure deficit, and water just osmosis
Speaker 4: over to that area.
Speaker 2: I have more questions, but I hope you're not.
Speaker 1: Are you late for anything?
Speaker 4: No? I literally have nothing else.
Speaker 3: Okay, good because people have questions. Hello, people have questions.
Speaker 4: I guess this is so exciting.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: Okay, wait, you could do this all night. All right.
Speaker 1: So when this episode first aired in twenty eighteen, we
Speaker 1: did not have a single sponsor yet. We just had
Speaker 1: wonderful folks at patreon dot com slash ologies who have
Speaker 1: kept this show afloat since day one. But now that
Speaker 1: we do have some ads, we can donate to a
Speaker 1: cause of the ologist choosing. And this week I don't
Speaker 1: know who Casey chose because I forgot to ask him,
Speaker 1: and I texted him a few hours ago, but he
Speaker 1: has not gone back to me because he's probably wearing
Speaker 1: a parka in a forest. And I'm going to update
Speaker 1: the link in the show notes as soon as I know,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure it will be cool and leafy and deserving.
Speaker 1: So money going to a charity TVA thanks to the
Speaker 1: following sponsors. Okay, let's bark up his tree with some question.
Speaker 1: Beth Frausto wants to know do trees feel pain when
Speaker 1: we trim them.
Speaker 4: Oh, they do, but not in a strict sense. So
Speaker 4: the pain isn't so much that they are like ow,
Speaker 4: they're more because they're compartmentalizers. So all that does is
Speaker 4: create a reaction that says, ooh, I need to protect myself.
Speaker 4: Something may get in. Either it's gonna get an insect
Speaker 4: that is gonna come in, or it's gonna be a
Speaker 4: fungus or both, or a multitude of other things. So
Speaker 4: as soon as you prune a tree, it will get
Speaker 4: a wound. It's not that the tree is feeling hurt,
Speaker 4: but the tree will then respond to that. So they'll
Speaker 4: respond immediately, especially by the next year, and they will
Speaker 4: just put on new wood to cover over it. So
Speaker 4: it just puts in these three walls of chemical protection,
Speaker 4: then grows a fourth wall of wood over the top
Speaker 4: to seal over that wound.
Speaker 2: And this never happens exactly.
Speaker 4: It's like it never happened. So anytime you cut a
Speaker 4: tree and then it just starts pushing out sap a,
Speaker 4: it's kind of like bleeding, especially if you cut it
Speaker 4: during the growing season, where it's just pushing out as
Speaker 4: much energy and sugars as it can to its leaves
Speaker 4: to grow. Big and strong. You cut that off, all
Speaker 4: of a sudden, there's a bunch of pressure inside the tree,
Speaker 4: literally pushing all this sap out. But that sap is
Speaker 4: also covering over that wound and making it an impenetrable
Speaker 4: place for all these other insects and things to get in.
Speaker 4: So it's actually literally sealing itself, right.
Speaker 1: It's like a varnished kind of yeah, exactly, delicious varnish.
Speaker 2: That actually leads me to my next question.
Speaker 1: Dustin Mills wants to know how many different kind of
Speaker 1: trees can you get syrup from the tree?
Speaker 4: Oh, so it does. It hurts it just like anything else.
Speaker 4: But it kind of hurts it in the same way
Speaker 4: that if you give blood, you're hurting yourself.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 4: So they have plenty of stored nutrients and stored sugars
Speaker 4: and all these things. So you can get syrup from
Speaker 4: almost any kind of tree. It just depends on if
Speaker 4: it's delicious or if it's so so diluted to where
Speaker 4: it just takes way too much effort to actually get it.
Speaker 4: So there's a tree called a sweet gum for all
Speaker 4: you nerds. That is liquid ambersyrisa FLUA wonderful, wonderful tree
Speaker 4: what they do is you used to tap them. That's
Speaker 4: why they call it sweet gum, because they would tap
Speaker 4: them in the south and then they would collect all
Speaker 4: of the tree sap. You boil it down to get
Speaker 4: all the water out, and you get this sugar. Some
Speaker 4: taste really good. Some have other chemicals in it that
Speaker 4: make them less tasty. People have used them on birch
Speaker 4: trees and on other different maple's all bunch of different
Speaker 4: species of maple. But the reason we use sugar maple
Speaker 4: right now is just because it has the highest concentration
Speaker 4: of sugar per amount of sap. This still takes hours
Speaker 4: and hours to boil it off to create the actual thing,
Speaker 4: of which there's no recipe. Every bit you get they're
Speaker 4: just looking at They're like, eh, looks done. Really yeah,
Speaker 4: there's no actual like boil it for ten minutes. It's
Speaker 4: boil it until it looks right. That's it.
Speaker 2: So analog.
Speaker 1: So side note confession, little fyi.
Speaker 4: I always thought.
Speaker 1: That maple syrup just kind of dripped out of trees
Speaker 1: as is, like you could just wander in the forest
Speaker 1: with a pocket full of waffles and just get a
Speaker 1: little smear here or there. But the sap actually comes
Speaker 1: out clear, kind of like water, and it takes forty
Speaker 1: gallons of it to boil down and make one gallon
Speaker 1: of maple syrup, which seems like a lot of tree tears,
Speaker 1: but they tap a bunch of them. They get just
Speaker 1: a little bit from everyone, So don't be too sad.
Speaker 1: You can continue to brunch unencumbered by guilt. Rodka Bikaria
Speaker 1: has a question, why do some trees lose their leaves
Speaker 1: in the winter and others don't?
Speaker 4: Aha, I love this question. So this comes down to
Speaker 4: a specific, basically strategy. So if you think of trees
Speaker 4: as having a budget, one part of their budget goes
Speaker 4: towards growing tall in competition, you know, physically getting to
Speaker 4: be a big size growth. Then another part of that
Speaker 4: budget would be towards reproduction, because there's no point in
Speaker 4: growing unless you can reproduce. The third part, the third
Speaker 4: big part, would go towards protection. So you can do
Speaker 4: any amount of energy put into any three or any
Speaker 4: one of those three categories. Obviously there's a couple more categories.
Speaker 4: It's very simplified. In this instance. You have a tree
Speaker 4: growing and it gets too cold, and so it's not
Speaker 4: that it actually gets too cold for the leaf itself.
Speaker 4: It's that wind continually rips through and damages that leaf.
Speaker 4: So what some trees have opted to do, or what
Speaker 4: has worked for them is instead of having just these
Speaker 4: dinky little leafs that just get completely destroyed during the wintertime,
Speaker 4: or the water freezes in the ground so the trees
Speaker 4: can't pull it up, or it gets too cold up
Speaker 4: in air, and ice crystals actually form in the leaf
Speaker 4: itself and rip it apart. Yeah, it's really bad when
Speaker 4: leaves and tissues like that freeze, just the same as
Speaker 4: if we our fingers froze. So for some trees would
Speaker 4: work for them is they made their leaves just a
Speaker 4: little bit tougher. So they put more of their energy
Speaker 4: into making that leaf really strong, making it waterproof, making
Speaker 4: it less edible, making it so adding more lignant and
Speaker 4: more things that make it more distasteful to different animals.
Speaker 4: Some trees put a lot of energy into their leaves.
Speaker 4: Because they put a lot of energy into their leaves,
Speaker 4: they now can hold them, but they don't want to
Speaker 4: just let them drop because there was so much energy.
Speaker 4: You can't just drop that onto the ground and then
Speaker 4: regrow it again the next year. So really tough leaves.
Speaker 4: They can withstand the conditions. So as soon as spring comes,
Speaker 4: if you get an early spring, the trees that are
Speaker 4: evergreen are already ready to go. They are photosynthesizing. Spring comes,
Speaker 4: boom are they're right off the bat. They would be
Speaker 4: able to compete better in that instance, whereas the deciduous
Speaker 4: trees are still dormant. They have not been growing over
Speaker 4: this entire season. They've dropped their leaves. But because they
Speaker 4: haven't put so much effort and energy into those leaves,
Speaker 4: they can put it into something else, i e. Into
Speaker 4: growing really fast or putting out a lot of fruit.
Speaker 4: So it's just more of a balance of which is
Speaker 4: more functionable for this tree at the right time.
Speaker 1: So it's it's more just about favorable conditions than it
Speaker 1: is about climate.
Speaker 2: It really depends on what's best for the tree.
Speaker 4: Yeah, most of the time, and obviously climate has something
Speaker 4: to do with it. Yeah, we have evergreen trees here
Speaker 4: because why lose your leaves if you can just photosynthesize
Speaker 4: for eighty percent of the year, just go for it.
Speaker 3: And then in the meantime they're living off of storage sugars.
Speaker 4: Yeah exactly. Yeah, so they're always respiring one hundred percent
Speaker 4: of the year. You know, trees are the only things,
Speaker 4: or rather certain plants are the only things that can
Speaker 4: produce their own food and then respire to use it,
Speaker 4: So we're respiring. Every living thing uses respiration to breathe,
Speaker 4: and that's why we breathe out carbon dioxide and water.
Speaker 4: Trees do the exact opposite. They say, take carbon dioxide
Speaker 4: and water, turn it into oxygen and a simple sugar
Speaker 4: or a long chain of sugars. So all they do
Speaker 4: is just store it, store at store it, and then
Speaker 4: just sort of sit there and then just eat sugar
Speaker 4: all year round until they can start growing again.
Speaker 3: Just snacking.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's really nice, it's delicious. I wish I could
Speaker 4: do it.
Speaker 1: Do you think that planting more trees will save the environment.
Speaker 4: Yes, Okay, I'm just gonna say blatant. Yes, we'll just
Speaker 4: leave it.
Speaker 2: Yes and yes, yeah.
Speaker 4: Always plant more trees. There's so many good reasons. We
Speaker 4: could do a thousand more hours of talking about.
Speaker 1: Do you think there are certain trees that Josh Bruce
Speaker 1: wants to know? Are there certain trees that are better
Speaker 1: for the environment than others?
Speaker 4: M yeah, I would say so, but really it's not
Speaker 4: necessarily better for the environment. It's better for maybe the
Speaker 4: micro environment. So small trees that don't cast a lot
Speaker 4: of shade over a bunch of cement not really doing
Speaker 4: a lot. A big, huge, large tree that shades over
Speaker 4: a bunch of cement and lowers the heat island effect
Speaker 4: in a city, which is just the fact that in
Speaker 4: the cities it's warmer temperatures than in the associated cropland
Speaker 4: or forest land. It's just cooler out there and warmer
Speaker 4: in here. And that's because we have so many impervious
Speaker 4: services that are taking in heat and then bouncing it
Speaker 4: back out. So if we have a big tree that's
Speaker 4: growing over the top of that, then we're shading out
Speaker 4: that area. Is if we do that over the scale
Speaker 4: of the entire United States, then all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: we're like losing millions of tons of carbon just by
Speaker 4: having one tree shading our house with during the hottest
Speaker 4: time of the day. So in that instance, yes, some
Speaker 4: are better at accomplishing our objectives in terms of helping
Speaker 4: out the environment. But for the most part, yeah, plant
Speaker 4: a tree. It's always going to be great.
Speaker 1: Now to end on happy note, what is your very
Speaker 1: very favorite thing about what you do.
Speaker 3: I know it's gonna be hard.
Speaker 4: This is oh man, but really it's looking at trees
Speaker 4: almost every single day, and most of them are all
Speaker 4: different trees or different situations of trees. So I go
Speaker 4: out and I see a dogwood one day and I
Speaker 4: get to protect it from a development. I'm like, nope,
Speaker 4: you have to retain this tree. It's an awesome tree.
Speaker 4: You did it. That makes me go home so happy.
Speaker 4: The other nice part that I really.
Speaker 3: Like is actually just telling people about trees.
Speaker 4: If I could just sit down, like and do something
Speaker 4: like this and someone's like, tell me about trees, I'm
Speaker 4: just like, where to begin, and then I can just
Speaker 4: do it for hours. So I think my favorite part
Speaker 4: is when someone's actively interestingly is listening to me. That's
Speaker 4: what I'm just like, they're taking this in, they like it. Okay,
Speaker 4: they're still here, all right, one more hour, one more slide,
Speaker 4: and let's let's just keep going.
Speaker 1: I don't think that I've ever met anyone is enthusiastic
Speaker 1: about trees.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's weird. So far, I haven't met anyone either.
Speaker 4: Maybe a couple of people, but yeah, at least I
Speaker 4: can give him a good run. For their money. So
Speaker 4: thank you. I'm happy to hear that.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Yeah, of course, yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: This is wonderful to continue to bask in Casey's infectious
Speaker 1: tree enthusiasm. You can follow him on Instagram at clap
Speaker 1: four Trees c l app four. The number four trees
Speaker 1: Ologies is on Instagram and Twitter at ologies, and I'm
Speaker 1: on both at ali Ward with one l. Also linked
Speaker 1: is aliwar dot com slashsmologies, which has dozens more kids
Speaker 1: safe and shorter episodes you can blaze through. And thank
Speaker 1: you Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio for editing those and
Speaker 1: says we like to keep things small around here. The
Speaker 1: rest of the credits are in the show notes, and
Speaker 1: if you stick around to the end of the episode,
Speaker 1: you know I'll give you a piece of advice.
Speaker 2: And this piece of.
Speaker 1: Advice helps me remember people's names. If someone introduces themselves
Speaker 1: number one, it's a good idea to remember to listen
Speaker 1: to what their name is, or if you didn't say
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, what was that? But then to remember their names.
Speaker 1: I immediately think of someone else with the same name
Speaker 1: who associate them with. So our editor her name is
Speaker 1: Mercedes if I just met her, I might think, okay,
Speaker 1: like the car Mercedes. That way, when I look at
Speaker 1: her ago like the car Mercedes. Or if I meet
Speaker 1: someone named Dorothy, I may think, oh, Dorothy, like the
Speaker 1: Wizard of Oz.
Speaker 2: Okay, that way, I'm not like, is it Donna?
Speaker 4: What was it?
Speaker 1: So try to think of someone else or something else
Speaker 1: with the same name. That way you can associate it
Speaker 1: with that person and then you remember their name. This
Speaker 1: is also a fun trick if you meet a lot
Speaker 1: of people at once, because people are gonna be like, WHOA,
Speaker 1: You remembered more names than is typical, and.
Speaker 2: You go, haha, I got a little trick. Way. I
Speaker 2: hope that helps al right. By bye, knowledge.
Speaker 5: Spology, alogy, anology, Langoges. Knowledge is