A Parable About Trees

Here's a little parable about plants.  In particular, a little row of street trees that I often walk past, just a few hundred metres from my home. I'm no botanist, but I believe these are Golden Penda trees, scientific name Xanthostemon chrysanthus.  They are Queensland natives but their natural range doesn't extend as far south as Brisbane. They are here because they were the official plant of Expo 88, planted in flower to provide visitors with a vibrant golden welcome.  

The thing about these trees is that they love to grow.  What first attracted me to them was the way the foliage was starting to sprout from the base of the trees.  At the end of last autumn you could see that the growth was already strong.

As I went out walking in the streets around my home I started watching the growth of these exuberant little sprouts.  Over a period of a few months last summer they went crazy, growing from modest little shoots to large new growths.

Last summer was one of the wettest on record.  It caused havoc to us humans; I had to evacuate my home again, and others had their homes inundated for a second time this century.  But the trees absolutely loved it!

It wasn't just the base of the trees.  Anywhere there was a lopped branch they sprouted new growth.  It was like they felt naked and needed to grow themselves new garments as quickly as they could.  

I found it wonderful, hopeful, almost giving life to me as I passed and let my eyes rest on those vivid green and orange shoots.  

Sadly, it was too good to last.  A bushy tree may give me joy but it's not really suited to being a street tree on a narrow footpath.  Over the winter, my local Council sent their team out to trim off the new growth and return the trunks to their naked state.

I was sad in a mild kind of way, but not really shocked or surprised.  This is how street trees are managed.  It's a delicate balance between providing greenery and a little shade and keeping the streets and footpaths clear enough to use.  A giant bush doesn't really make for a great street tree.  This is part of the reason Council doesn't plant Golden Pendas any more, but these mature trees just have to be managed as best they can be.  

Of course we don't know what the trees thought about this, but they sure act like they don't like having naked trunks!  Summer isn't over yet, and they are already hard at it replacing the growth the Council team got rid of.  There are still a good few months of growth left before they slow down for the winter.

Perhaps they don't really care.  Or perhaps this is just what trees do, the inevitable biochemical product of sunshine, water and soil nutrients.  The tree doesn't know the word 'stop' and if you cut it, it will just grow again.  

It will keep doing this until it dies, because of course trees are not immortal.  In the process it will created thousands, maybe millions of seeds and some of them will propagate elsewhere and keep the cycle going indefinitely.

***

Golden Pendas are not the only trees that re-shoot from their bases and lopped limbs like this.  Here, for instance, is a Jacaranda tree that grows in a park near me.  Unlike Golden Pendas, Jacarandas never go out of fashion, coating parks and footpaths with purple flowers every autumn. This one has been cut back and decided it needed to replace what it lost.  

In the same park is this Moreton Bay Fig tree, growing near the river bank as they love to, shooting some new branches out from its base.  

Just down the street I live on is a row of mature Leopard Trees that are sprouting away cheerfully.

And right across the road from them Council has planted some Tulipwood saplings.  This one is already doing its thing, sprouting cheerfully in its new spot.  

If you decapitate a human, or any kind of vertebrate or arthropod, it will not survive.  However, many plants cope fine with having all their foliage removed.  They just regrow from their roots or their stumps.  Just down the road from the Golden Pendas is this hibiscus that was heavily pruned.  Now look at it!

We have this tree in our front yard - for the life of me I can't find out what it's called.  A few years ago it was thriving, a full bushy tree growing up above roof height.  Then it started to suffer - it seemed something was eating it - and it died right back.  However, we noticed that it had new, healthy-looking shoots sprouting near the base of its multiple trunks, so we thought we would try cutting it down the the level of the new growth and see what would happen.

Sure enough, the new shoots took off with the extra sunlight and the relief at not having to try and support the dying upper branches, and the tree has survived and kept growing.  As you can see even from this photo it's still pretty scraggy and the top branches are getting eaten again.  It hasn't grown back to its former glory but it's still struggling on despite the predators and the competition from surrounding plants.  

As I say, plants want to grow, and any chance they get they will do just that, even if their seed falls in the most un-promising locations.  Like this little trooper, which has been trying for a couple of years to make a life for itself in a stormwater drain at the back of the Princess Alexandra Hospital. 

Trees are one thing, but smaller plants are even more prolific.  Grasses and other smaller plants will seek out the tiniest cracks and spaces to grow.  You will all have seen something just like this, on the footpath just a few metres from the stormwater drain tree.  Various species have lodged in a tiny crack between the pavement and the kerb and made the most of the opportunity to sink their roots into the soil beneath and pop their leaves up into the sun.

Left to themselves, some of these plants will die, but most will keep on growing or at least keep on living, sending out new leaves and shoots, producing flowers and seeds and eventually covering the ground.  Given enough time, the grasses will gradually widen the cracks in the concrete and make way for other, larger plants.  If my suburb was left to itself, given enough time it would become a forest, as it was before the founding of the city of Brisbane.

But of course they won't be left to themselves, because we have a sprawling, resource-hungry city to manage.  We will trim the trees into shapes we find useful or appealing.  We will spray the plants we see as weeds with herbicides (a weed being 'a plant in the wrong place' - wrong for us, that is!).  We will try to bend the plants to our will - but fortunately, we will never entirely succeed.

***

There are several times when the various Biblical writers portray the whole of creation, including the plants and trees, singing and dancing for joy.  For instance, there is Psalm 148.

Praise the Lord from the earth,

    you great sea creatures and all ocean depths,

lightning and hail, snow and clouds,

    stormy winds that do his bidding,

you mountains and all hills,

    fruit trees and all cedars,

wild animals and all cattle,

    small creatures and flying birds,

kings of the earth and all nations,

    you princes and all rulers on earth,

young men and women,

    old men and children.

Or the famous passage from Isaiah 55.

You will go out in joy

    and be led forth in peace;

the mountains and hills

    will burst into song before you,

and all the trees of the field

    will clap their hands.

These are pictures of the world as it should be, the creation exuberant, joyful and us likewise.  But we know that it is not like this most of the time, and this is largely down to us.  Earlier in Isaiah the prophet warns:

The earth will be completely laid waste

    and totally plundered.

The Lord has spoken this word.

The earth dries up and withers,

    the world languishes and withers,

    the heavens languish with the earth.

The earth is defiled by its people;

    they have disobeyed the laws,

violated the statutes

    and broken the everlasting covenant.

Therefore a curse consumes the earth;

    its people must bear their guilt.

Therefore earth’s inhabitants are burned up,

    and very few are left.

If we go down, we take the rest of the living creation with us.  The Bible reminds us in many places that this creation doesn't belong to us but to God.  We also see that living things have their own separate being and are not simply appendages of our lives.  For instance Deuteronomy 20:19 says,

“When you besiege a city for a long time, making war against it in order to take it, you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an axe against them. You may eat from them, but you shall not cut them down. Are the trees in the field human, that they should be besieged by you?".  

We carry a heavy responsibility, and one that at the moment we seem to be failing in a big way.  On climate change, pollution, resource extraction, biodiversity, we are rapidly crossing planetary boundaries and creating a less livable earth for both ourselves and God's other creatures.  

What the parable of the trees tells us is that non-human life doesn't simply passively receive whatever we do to it.  It is not waiting for us to act in order to begin the process of recovery and rejuvenation - it is doing it constantly, with great persistence and determination.  The trees, grasses, mosses, seaweeds, plankton - everything wants to grow and is doing its best.  

On one estimate, we could remove all the excess carbon from the atmosphere by planting a trillion trees.  A trillion is a massive number - a 1 with 12 zeroes after it.  This is roughly 125 trees for every living human being.  How is it possible that we could plant this many trees?  It seems unlikely that we can ever do so, and of course it will be much more straightforward to stop emitting greenhouse gases ASAP.  

The thing is, if we took our collective foot off the throat of the trees - stopped cutting them down, pruning them, weeding them out, spraying them with herbicides - they would do a lot of the work themselves.  After all, there is a tree growing in the stormwater drain at the back of the hospital, and grass and weeds spontaneously popping their heads up from the cracks in the concrete pavement.  Plants are everywhere, just searching for a chance to grow and propagate.  

In Romans 8 Paul says:

For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

What could be more frustrating than to spend the summer putting out exuberant new shoots, which the tree wants and we desperately need as a carbon sink, only for them to be lopped off and mulched the next winter?  And doing it year after year, for decades on end?  

Let's find ways to reduce the frustration, and give ourselves and everything else a chance at a better life!