Did you know that plants live in community, too?
I’ve been writing a lot about community being the nature of life in this world, in the life of animals and people. In reality, every creature depends on others of its kind for help and sustenance and safety and many other things, plus it has a purpose that it fulfills in our interdependent system on our planet. Just think about the rise of social apathy and depression in this age of materialism and the loss of community in so many ways for us humans. Several years ago I read The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohllben, who is a forest ranger in Germany. I was astonished to read that trees in a natural forest fight off pests and diseases through the release of fluids and defensive compounds, working through the fungi on the ground by their roots. Even dead trees in a forest are important, as they provide food/nutrition for 1/5th of all plants and animals on earth.[1]
I had no idea that trees helped each other. I can’t see anything happening between the trees, so, for a long time I just thought what I saw was the reality of what is true about trees. Was I wrong!
Indeed, Wohlben writes in the introduction: “The future of forests and the future of humanity are inextricably entwined”… crediting trees for their ability to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, cool the local climate and increase rainfall.[2] Isn’t it interesting that trees are helping us, just a part of the totally interdependent planet Earth. Hopefully, we human beings are also helping the trees and plants survive global warming, but there’s little evidence of that yet.
Robin Walll Kimmerer, a native American and a biologist, writes in her book Braiding Sweetgrass that the “three sisters,” corn, beans, and squash, when grown together as seeds interestingly help each other:
“At the height of the summer, when the days are long and bright and the thunderers come to soak the ground, the lessons of reciprocity are written clearly in a Three Sisters garden. Together their terms inscribe what looks to me like a blueprint for the world, a map of balance and harmony. The corn stands eight feet tall; rippling green ribbons of leaf curl away from the stem in every direction to catch the sun. No leaf sets directly over the next, so that each can gather light without itself between the leaves of corn, never interfering with their work. In the spaces where corn leaves are not, buds appear on the vining bean and expand into outstretched leaves and clusters of fragrant flowers. The bean leaves droop and are held close to the stem of the corn. Spread around the feet of the corn and beans is a carpet of big broad squash leaves that intercept the light that falls among the pillars of corn. Their layered spacing uses the light…efficiently with no waste. The organic symmetry of forms belongs together, the placement of every leaf, the harmony of shapes speak their message. Respect one another, support one another, bring your gift to the world and receive the gifts of others, and there will be enough for all.
“By late summer, the beans hand in heavy clusters of smooth greenpods, ears of corn angle out from the stalk, fattenng in the sunshine and pumpkins swell at your feet. Acre for acre, a Three Sisters garden yields more food than if you grew each of the sisters alone.”[3]
This is another instance of plants growing together in harmony, creating space and nurture for each to grown. How many other instances of plants helping each other exist that we know nothing about? Again, this is the nature of a world that was created by God to be totally interdependent and truly supportive of the plants and animals and human needs. We see so little of this today as many things stand between us and the natural environment—farmers, corporations, grocery stores, our need for food to cook and to eat—because we are consumed with our modern lives at work, taking care of our children and their schools, and our futures. Let’s open our eyes to the truth about what we depend upon to live, even to exist, here on this earth. Let’s make sure that we are supporting the natural environment in which all this true interdependence takes place which totally supports us human beings, too.
Let us prioritize our concerns for the real things that help us live, not the material things we desire and think that we need. As Global Warming succeeds in overheating the planet with hotter temperatures, and with more and more storms and tornadoes and fires and other tragedies today and in the future, let us lean on our governments more and more to take care of the earth, for nations to work together to eliminate gasoline and coal in favor of solar and wind energy creating the electricity we so need for our cars and homes and internet communication, which will gradually eliminate our dependence on these fossil fuels which are the main source of the problem.
This can clearly be seen as a problem that humanity is having with God, who created this beautiful system with all that was needed to support each kind of plants and animals, including us human beings. And we are the ones that can respond to the call of Global Warming and all it is asking of us to turn this issue around, so that we can all thrive again, as God created us here to do. It’s really a matter of faithfulness to God. We were given authority over the planet,[4] because we are the ones who can fathom what is going on and how it must be fixed. We are also the ones who will suffer immensely if we fail to act as God as asking of us through the science of today. So let’s pray for the planet and then do for it what God is calling each of us to do. He knows how to fix it, if we each will just listen to Him and do what He asks of us.
[1] Bing.comvideos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=review+or+the=hissen+life+of+trees
[2] Wohlleben, Peter (2023). The Power of Trees: How Ancient Forests Can Save Us if We Let Them. From the Author of The Hidden Life of Trees. Jane Billinghurst. Vancouver: Greystone Books. ISBN 978-1-77164-774-8.
[3] Robin Wall Kimmerer, “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants” (Canada: Milkweed Editions, 2013) pp. 131-132
[4] Genesis 1:26-28: “Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground…”