Summary
- Liz Marvin describes what we can learn from a variety of different trees to improve our thinking and life.
Key Takeaways
- Mangrove – Life can often feel like a struggle, and it’s easy to get caught up in dealing with the day-to-day. Although thoughts of the future can be overwhelming, it really does pay to plan ahead. Mangroves have developed some amazing adaptations so they can live in salty water, even finding a clever way to use the water to spread future generations of trees. Instead of seeds, mangroves produce little seedlings called propagules that grow from the parent plant until they are big enough to float away on the current and take root in their own spot
- Giant Sequoia – We all push ourselves too hard sometimes and don’t always appreciate the things within our reach. If this is you, think about the giant sequoia. This amazing tree can grow as tall as a skyscraper, but it still knows when to stop and take stock. Trees use a clever process of evaporation to pump water up to the canopies, were photosynthesis takes place. But the laws of physics dictate that this only works up to about 390 feet. The tallest tree on earth is a giant sequoia called Hyperion that stands at 379 feet. See?
- Sugar Maple – we’ve all felt like a small sapling in a big forest at some point. So when you start to get a bit more established, with a little patch of sunlight to call your own, don’t forget the little guys coming up behind. Woodland trees like the sugar maple use their underground networks to pump sugars to the younger generation who might be struggling in the shade. So look around. Does anyone in your forest need a bit of help to get them growing?
What I got out of it
- Beautiful book that should be paired with Hidden Life of Trees. So much to learn from the book of nature
