Plants are conscious, emit sounds, TALK

The Secret Life of Plants

Talk to plants? While we may not be able to hear them, plants could very well be talking back. [Perhaps they are not great listeners, after all, but they are conscious enough to "speak"]. They talk all the time and especially if they are having a bad day. (Did we forget to water them again?) For the first time in the world, Tel Aviv University (TAU) researchers recorded and analyzed sounds distinctly emitted by plants. The click-like sounds, resembling the snap of popcorn, are emitted at a volume similar to human speech but at higher frequencies, beyond the hearing range of the human ear.

Professors Yosi Yovel and Lilach Hadany (TAU)

Researchers: "We found that plants usually emit sounds when they are under stress, and that each plant and each type of stress is associated with a specific identifiable sound. [That is a distinctive mark of speech rather than just sound making.] While imperceptible to the human ear, the sounds emitted by plants can probably be heard by various animals, such as bats, mice, and insects." More

• Science already knew plants "communicate" with chemical signals and scents (VOAs) through roots, leaves, stems:

(Anton Petrov) Mind blowing: plants 'talking' to each other in real time

Listen to sound plants make when 'stressed'

Indian scientist Bose proved it

(The Independent) April 3, 2023: Plants emit [high pitched] sounds when they are "stressed," a group of scientific researchers has discovered.

A team at Tel Aviv University in Israel recorded and analyzed click-like sounds resembling the popping of popcorn. They found that the sounds plants emitted are at a volume similar to human speech, but humans cannot hear them due to the high frequency.

• Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative: Cell
• Science & Astronomy | Israel decoded plant communication signals — hearing trees scream during drought | Facebook
• Plants emit sounds – especially when stressed | Tel Aviv University
• Indian botanist Cambridge at JC Bose on the Secret Life of Plants (SRF)
• VIDEO: Plants are CONSCIOUS, scientist J.C. Bose proved
• Who was visionary Indian scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose?
• Paramhansa Yogananda revealed Bose's plant research in his bestselling classic Autobiography of a Yogi (Chapter 8)

Stone, metal, mineral, crystal are all conscious.

"Each plant and each type of stress is associated with a specific identifiable sound.

"While imperceptible to the [ordinary] human ear, the sounds emitted by plants can probably be heard by various [naturally more sensitive] animals, such as bats, mice, and insects," the researchers said.

Jump straight to Chapter 8 to hear about JC Bose's plant research

Prof. Yosi Yovel and Prof. Lilach Hidany on their scientific findings

Meditation? How conscious are plants?

Sujata helped Siddhartha become the Buddha because she thought he was a tree spirit.

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Journeys with Plant Spirits

Meditation journeys with specific plant and tree spirits? Yes, Mugwort, Rosemary, Dandelion, Yew, Elder, and Wormwood do it. How can we [humans] achieve a calm mind, cleanse our energy fields, and connect with our hearts in preparation for meditating with plants?

Journeys with Plant Spirits includes a progressive series of introductory meditations, adapted from ancient wisdom traditions, to lay the foundation for working with plant spirits.

Emma Farrell explains how to take a connection and relationship with Nature to a deeper level to access plant spirit healing through meditation with plants.

Dryad (tree spirit) lives in tree

Exploring the nature of plant consciousness and how plants perceive, she details how to achieve a calm mind, cleanse an energy field, and connect with heart in preparation for meditating with plants and trees [dryads], showing how the plants can support us not only in the cleansing process but also in teaching us how to sense what is in our energy field.

Offering a progressive series of preparatory meditations adapted from shamanic and indigenous wisdom traditions, the author reveals how to lay the foundation for communicating, working, and developing relationships with plant and tree spirits -- for spiritual connection, personal development, and inner peace.

She then presents meditation journeys with specific plant spirits, focusing on the frequencies within the plant’s bioresonance that can assist us.

Siddhartha awakened with the help of a Tree.

For example, meditation with Mugwort works with the plant spirit’s qualities of alignment and self-awareness to assist with grounding and developing inner vision, whereas Dandelion helps break old habits by working with the plant’s qualities of release, reconnection, and fearlessness.

Each plant is an expression of the spiritual force of Mother Nature and carries a unique blend of her medicine and wisdom. This book details step-by-step how to effectively work with plant spirits for emotional and spiritual healing, enabling us to awaken spirit to become truly multidimensional and whole. More

• The Secret Life of Plants: A Fascinating Account of the Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual Relations Between Plants and Man – Revolutionary Science on Botanical Consciousness (by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird)

ABOUT: The Independent: making change happen. The Independent is the world’s most free-thinking news brand, providing global news, commentary, and analysis for the independently-minded. Connect with The Independent (published in Britain): Check out full video catalog: theindependent. Videos, daily editorials, and more: theindy.com. Watch more videos at the Independent TV: independent.co.uk/tv/edit... Subscribe to Independent.

• Yosi Yovel, Lilach Hidany, U of Israel (english.tau.ac.il/plants_emit_sounds); The Independent (UK); Anton Petrov; Emma Farrell; Dhr. Seven, Kalyani, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation) (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Another world in woods with green beings

UPDATE: They had green skin - and no one knew where they came from | The Why Files

We live on the Emerald Isle, too (Ireland)

WOOLPIT, England - The story of the green children of Woolpit concerns two [Fairy] children of unusual skin color who reportedly appeared in the village of Woolpit in Suffolk, England, sometime in the 12th century, perhaps during the reign of King Stephen (r. 1135–1154). The odd children, found to be brother and sister, were of generally normal appearance except for the green color of their skin. They spoke in an unknown language and would eat only raw broad beans. Eventually, they learned to eat other [surface human] food and lost their green color, but the boy was sickly and died around the time of his and his sister's baptism. More

• Green Children of Woolpit
• Foundlings, Changelings, Irish Aos Sí, Pixies
• Forest Fairies (pixies), br.pinterest.com; 42 (Thoughty2 video); Eds., Wisdom Quarterly

Let's talk about better toilet paper

I am not my mom Demi Moore.

Rumer Willis doesn't mind if you see her breastfeeding her baby, Lou. And her sister Scout doesn't mind if you see her breasts/nipples even when she's not. Rumer's trying to get our attention about the dangers of common TOXIC toilet paper. [Switch to a bidet ASAP.]

Until switching there's a softer, stronger, smarter choice. PlantPaper is one company's response to an industry and a [poor] hygienic practice in dire need of an update. [That's where the bidet saves the day, using pure water.]

• Free The Nipple: Scout Willis goes topless
• Will we also see Rumer Willis protest topless? We think not
• Rumer Willis goes TOPLESS in breastfeeding photo for International Women’s Day
• Scout Willis walks NYC streets topless to protest Instagram nudity policy – NBC New York
• Scout LaRue Willis on [Rated] X: "What @instagram won't let you see #FreeTheNipple http://t.co/lASApy0W0S" / X
• (Who is Scout LaRue Willis (@Scout_Willis) / X?)

A clean butt is a healthy butt, but don't stare.

When this company first began developing PlantPaper in 2016, it knew it wouldn’t be enough just to make a cleaner toilet paper; it had to be a better toilet paper—a toilet paper the creators of the company themselves would want to use—a trade-up, not a trade-off, a toilet paper without compromise.

• [What to make it with since you don't seem to be getting off yer arse 'n gettin the message that a bidet is the way to go? Mmm, why not use material better than toxic wood pulp?]

Hey, what if we were to use bamboo?

Ah, I feel so much cleaner now.

The more bamboo is harvested, the faster it grows. A bamboo grove may be able to produce as much as 10 times more usable fiber for paper than a tree forest of equivalent size.

Bamboo stores up to 40% of its carbon underground, carbon that remains intact even when it’s harvested. [There's a better choice.] plantpaper.us

• Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Plants are conscious: Scientist J.C. Bose

• Chapter 8: India’s Great Scientist, J.C. Bose - Autobiography of a Yogi (crystalclarity.com)

Autobiography of a Yogi, Chapter 8: India’s great scientist, J.C. Bose

Indian scientist J.C. Bose

“Jagadis Chandra Bose’s wireless inventions antedated [preceded] those of Marconi.” [Bose was the Tesla of India in England, with a lab at Cambridge, inventing the most sensitive instruments of his day. Marconi is credited with developing the radio and wireless telegraph.]

Overhearing this provocative remark, I walked closer to a sidewalk group of professors engaged in scientific discussion. If my motive in joining them was racial [Indian] pride, I regret it. I cannot deny my keen interest in evidence that India can play a leading part in physics, and not metaphysics alone.

“What do you mean, sir?”

Read the original first edition.

The professor obligingly explained. “Bose was the first one to invent a wireless coherer and an instrument for indicating the refraction of electric waves. But the Indian scientist did not exploit his inventions commercially. He soon turned his attention from the inorganic to the organic world. His revolutionary discoveries as a plant physiologist are outpacing even his radical achievements as a physicist.”

I politely thanked my mentor. He added, “The great scientist is one of my brother professors at Presidency College.”

I paid a visit the next day to the sage at his home, which was close to mine on Gurpar Road. I had long admired him from a respectful distance. The grave and retiring botanist greeted me graciously. He was a handsome, robust man in his fifties, with thick hair, broad forehead, and the abstracted eyes of a dreamer. The precision in his tones revealed the lifelong scientific habit.

If John Travolta were a genius (Phenomenon)

Journeys with Plant Spirits

“I have recently returned from an expedition to scientific societies of the West. Their members exhibited intense interest in delicate instruments of my invention which demonstrate the indivisible unity of all life.1 The Bose crescograph has the enormity of ten million magnifications. The microscope enlarges only a few thousand times; yet it brought vital impetus to biological science. The crescograph opens incalculable vistas.”

“You have done much, sir, to hasten the embrace of East and West in the impersonal arms of science.”

“I was educated at Cambridge. How admirable is the Western method of submitting all theory to scrupulous experimental verification! That empirical procedure has gone hand in hand with the gift for introspection which is my Eastern heritage. Together they have enabled me to sunder the silences of natural realms long uncommunicative. The telltale charts of my crescograph [2] are evidence for the most skeptical that plants have a sensitive nervous system and a varied emotional life. Love, hate, joy, fear, pleasure, pain, excitability, stupor, and countless appropriate responses to stimuli are as universal in plants as in animals.”

“The unique throb of life in all creation could seem only poetic imagery before your advent, Professor! A saint I once knew would never pluck flowers. ‘Shall I rob the rosebush of its pride in beauty? Shall I cruelly affront its dignity by my rude divestment?’ His sympathetic words are verified literally through your discoveries!”

“The poet is intimate with truth, while the scientist approaches awkwardly. Come someday to my laboratory and see the unequivocable testimony of the crescograph.”

What secrets do plants hold?

Gratefully I accepted the invitation, and took my departure. I heard later that the botanist had left Presidency College, and was planning a research center in Calcutta.

When the Bose Institute was opened, I attended the dedicatory services. Enthusiastic hundreds strolled over the premises. I was charmed with the artistry and spiritual symbolism of the new home of science. Its front gate, I noted, was a centuried relic from a distant shrine. Behind the lotus3 fountain, a sculptured female figure with a torch conveyed the Indian respect for woman as the immortal light-bearer. The garden held a small temple consecrated to the Noumenon beyond phenomena. Thought of the divine incorporeity was suggested by absence of any altar-image.

Bose’s speech on this great occasion might have issued from the lips of one of the inspired ancient rishis.

“I dedicate today this Institute as not merely a laboratory but a temple.” His reverent solemnity stole like an unseen cloak over the crowded auditorium. “In the pursuit of my investigations I was unconsciously led into the border region of physics and physiology. To my amazement, I found boundary lines vanishing, and points of contact emerging, between the realms of the living and the non-living. Inorganic matter was perceived as anything but inert; it was athrill under the action of multitudinous forces.

“A universal reaction seemed to bring metal, plant and animal under a common law. They all exhibited essentially the same phenomena of fatigue and depression, with possibilities of recovery and of exaltation, as well as the permanent irresponsiveness associated with death. Filled with awe at this stupendous generalization, it was with great hope that I announced my results before the Royal Society—results demonstrated by experiments. But the physiologists present advised me to confine myself to physical investigations, in which my success had been assured, rather than encroach on their preserves. I had unwittingly strayed into the domain of an unfamiliar caste system and so offended its etiquette.

“An unconscious theological bias was also present, which confounds ignorance with faith. It is often forgotten that He who surrounded us with this ever-evolving mystery of creation has also implanted in us the desire to question and understand. Through many years of miscomprehension, I came to know that the life of a devotee of science is inevitably filled with unending struggle. It is for him to cast his life as an ardent offering—regarding gain and loss, success and failure, as one. More (crystalclarity.com)

• Autobiography of a Yogi audiobook in English | Chapter 8
• Echoes of Wisdom, 2023; Kelly Ani, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly, orig. 6/27/24

The Guardians of the Forest (film)

• We Are Guardians | Film

Leo, star of The Beach, is executive producer

THE FILM is a journey of hope in the midst of crisis. In the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, thousands of people are unlawfully invading protected lands, devastating centuries-old forests for resources and fast profits.

Now as the health of the entire Amazon [jungle rainforest] teeters at the edge, will Brazil and the world take notice?

Indigenous forest guardian Marçal Guajajara and Indigenous leader Puyr Tembé stand at the frontlines of this fight, risking their lives to protect their ancestral lands from relentless invasions and deforestation.

On the other side -- Valdir, an illegal logger, is trapped in a desperate struggle to make ends meet and sees no other way than continuing to cut down the forest [that supports everyone].

This is the powerful narrative at the heart of We Are Guardians — a story of hope and resilience amidst an unfolding crisis.

Through a tapestry of voices, this award-winning documentary provides a raw and intimate look at the lives of those closest to the Amazon and peels back the layers of this critical situation to reveal a story that ultimately affects all of us.

Directed by Edivan Guajajara, Chelsea Greene, and Rob Grobman, and produced by Academy Award winner Fisher Stevens with Leonardo DiCaprio serving as executive producer, the film is an exploration of the human spirit and our collective responsibility to protect the fragile balance of our world.

Ultimately, it illuminates a path forward, where hope and unity can guide us toward a brighter future for the Amazon and our planet. More

• TAKE ACTION | We Are Guardians

Moss People: real forest-dwelling fairies

Hi, I'm Kate Moss. I just love green; there's no relation.

Kate MOSS, yes, she sounds familiar and related to us, all waifish, skin all lichen-like (crepey).

.

Don't look at me. I'm not a Moss!

Trees are greening, flowers are blooming, birds are nesting – why? Spring is in the air! Despite the happy days this brings, be wary of what else may be lurking in deep, dark forests. From German folklore, let's explore the world of the moss people.

In German folklore, moss folk resemble dwarves (called kumbhandas in Buddhist cosmology and gnomes in much of Europe), nearly the size of human children. But they are covered in green moss, with skin that looks gray, and a lot of hair like lichen.

The mossy frog of Vietnam shows off its moss camo

I may be small and love green...

Their arms and legs appear as “knotted maple bark.” Centuries ago, humans considered them part of the fairy realm dedicated to trees and the forest in general.

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For unknown reasons, the moss people population consisted mostly of females. These “fairies” were known to borrow things from humans and, at other times, ask for help from them.

Maiden (Kettle Quill/Deviant Art)

Occasionally, they would ask humans for breast milk to feed their own moss babies. They repaid their benefactors with good advice or bread.

However, one had to be wary of their quick tempers. If one gave them caraway bread, for instance, they would become very angry and cry, “Caraway bread, our death!”

Some tales describe them as behaving like changelings in that they would sometimes steal very small human children. Female moss people, called Mossfraulein (“moss women”)... More: Moss People creeping out of forests

• visitcryptoville.com; Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterlycosmology

Plant Spirit Consciousness: Magic Journeys

PlantConsciousness.com

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Emma Fitchett Farrell (Natural Esoterics)

Tibetan Buddhist, plant spirit healer, and shamanic teacher Emma Fitchett is a lineage holder of the White Serpent teachings of the British Isle of Manx and the Pacific Island of Vanuatu, who has been initiated into ancient magical practices.

CIA madman Cleve Backster

How did she gain her powers? They were opened or vivified for her by Iboga, a psychoactive root from Gabon, she claims. The plant spirit sensitized her to our innate human gifts to see and sense beyond the ordinary five senses.

Appearing on Coast to Coast on April 2, 2024, she discusses how to access plant spirit healing through meditation with plants as well as the work of CIA mad scientist Cleve Backster, who gets credit for pioneering the measurement of how plants perceive human consciousness.

Such credit in fact belongs to Indian scientist in England

Great scientist Bose on the secret lives of plants

Jagadish Chandra Bose, who published his observation and was made famous by Paramhansa Yogananda in Chapter 8 of Autobiography of a Yogi decades before Backster.

• Chapter 8: India’s Great Scientist, J.C. Bose - Autobiography of a Yogi (crystalclarity.com)
• The School of Natural Esoterics (YouTube)
• The Secret Life of Plants: A Fascinating Account of the Physical, Emotional and Spiritual Relations Between Plants and Man (Peter Tompkins)
• naturalesoterics.org
• plantconsciousness.com
• BOOK: Journeys with Plant Spirits

Journeys with Plant Spirits: Consciousness.

Journeys with Plant Spirits: Plant Healing Magic

Emma Farrell (aka Fitchett), with a foreword by Pam Montgomery, has 4.4 out of 5 stars with 34 ratings.

This is a guide to communicating and working with plant and tree spirits for personal development, spiritual connection, inner peace, and healing.

It presents meditation journeys with specific plant and tree spirits, such as Mugwort (dreams), Rosemary (cleansing), Dandelion (liver), Yew (poison), Elder (healing), and Wormwood (artemisia).

Find details on how to achieve a calm mind, cleanse your energy field, and connect with your heart in preparation for meditating with the plants.

It includes a progressive series of introductory meditations, adapted from wisdom traditions, to lay the foundation for working with plant spirits.

In this book, Emma Farrell explains how to take your connection and relationship with nature to a deeper level and access plant spirit healing through meditation with plants.

Exploring the nature of plant consciousness and how plants perceive, she details how to achieve a calm mind, cleanse our energy field, and connect with our heart in preparation for meditating with plants and trees, showing how the plants can support us not only in the cleansing process but also in teaching us how to sense what is in our energy field.

Offering a progressive series of preparatory meditations adapted from shamanic and indigenous wisdom traditions, the author reveals how to lay the foundation for working, communicating, and developing relationships with plant and tree spirits -- for personal development, spiritual connection, and inner peace.

(Podcast: The Future is Beautiful with Amisha Ghadiali) How do we work with plant medicines in a meaningful and respectful way? In this episode, Amisha talks with Shaman Emma Fitchett, a plant spirit healer, teacher, and author initiated into and trained in indigenous healing and magical lineages of the British Isles and the Ecuadorian Amazon, who is also a Yew Mysteries initiate and a holder of the lineage of the White Serpent from Manx and Vanuatu. This conversation illuminates how we can grow our spiritual sovereignty and balance our inner and outer worlds in co-creation with nature’s medicines. It is a gift for all of those who want to explore more in relation to plant medicines, want to know how, and want to explore to reveal the truth of our existence in this living (animistic) world.

She then presents meditation journeys with specific plant spirits, focusing on the frequencies within the plant’s bio-resonance that will assist us.

For example, the meditation with Mugwort works with the plant spirit’s qualities of alignment and self-awareness to assist us with grounding and developing inner vision, while the meditation with Dandelion helps us break old habits by working with the plant’s qualities of release, reconnection, and fearlessness.

What do forest tradition Buddhist monks know?

Revealing how each plant is an expression of the soul force of Mother Nature and carries a unique blend of her medicine and wisdom, this book details step-by-step how to effectively work with plant spirits for emotional and spiritual healing, enabling us to awaken the eternal spirit, or soul, to become truly multidimensional and whole. More

• British Emma Fitchett, with buffoonish host G-Man Noory, Coast to Coast AM com, 4/3/24; Dhr. Seven, Kelly Ani, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation) (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Science: Trees used to be very Dr. Seuss (Lorax)

Ayurella Horn-Muller, CNN, 2/2/23; Kelly Ani, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Rare ancient tree discovery has scientists ‘gobsmacked’

Trees are believed to have originated hundreds of millions of years ago. Ever since, evidence of these ancient plant sentinels has been in short supply.

Shush! He's doing something important.

Now, a new discovery of uniquely 3D tree fossils has opened a window into what the world was like when the planet’s early forests were beginning to evolve [change in adaptation to changing environment], expanding our understanding of the architecture of trees throughout Earth’s history.

Five tree fossils buried alive by an earthquake 350 million years ago were found in a quarry in the Canadian province of New Brunswick, according to a study published today (Friday, 2/2/24) in the journal Current Biology.

The authors said these new and unusual fossil trees not only bear a surprising shape reminiscent of a Dr. Seuss illustration, they reveal clues about a period of life on Earth of which we know little.

“They are time capsules,” said Dr. Robert Gastaldo, an American paleontologist and sedimentologist who led the study, “literally little windows into deep-time landscapes and ecosystems.”

Coauthors Olivia King and Matthew Stimson unearthed the first of the ancient trees in 2017 while doing fieldwork in a rock quarry in New Brunswick.

One of the specimens they discovered is among a handful of cases in the entire plant fossil record — spanning more than 400 million years — in which a tree’s branches and crown leaves are still attached to its trunk.

(Mark Rober) Let's plant 20 million trees using these drones

I knew Dr. Seuss was tapping into something

Few tree fossils that date back to Earth’s earliest forests have ever been found, according to Dr. Gastaldo. Their discovery helps fill in some missing pieces of an incomplete fossil record.

“There are only five or six trees that we can document, at least in the Paleozoic, that were preserved with its crown intact,” said Prof. of Geology Gastaldo at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.

Most ancient tree specimens are relatively small, he noted, and often discovered in the form of a fossilized trunk with a stump or root system attached.

For his colleagues to find a preserved tree that could have been 15 feet tall in its maturity with an 18-foot diameter crown left the paleontologist “gobsmacked.”

Model rendering of the newly discovered Sanfordiacaulis tree includes simplified branching structure for easier visualization. (Courtesy Tim Stonesifer © Provided by CNN)

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Ancient earthquake burial

Massive quake, as in Afghanistan, hit the area

The researchers excavated the first fossil tree about seven years ago, but it took another few years before four more specimens of the same plant were found in close proximity to one another.

Dubbed “Sanfordiacaulis,” the newly identified species was named in honor of Laurie Sanford, the owner of the quarry where the trees were unearthed.

The forms taken by these previously unknown 350-million-year-old plants look somewhat like a modern-day fern or palm, according to the study, despite the fact that those tree species didn’t appear until 300 million years later.

But while the tops of ferns or palms as we know them boast few leaves, the most complete specimen of the newly discovered fossils has more than 250 leaves preserved around its trunk, with each partially preserved leaf extending around 5.7 feet (1.7 meters).

That fossil is encased in a sandstone boulder and roughly the size of a small car, according to Dr. Stimson, an assistant curator of geology and paleontology at the New Brunswick Museum.

The unique fossilization of the cluster of trees is likely due to a “catastrophic” earthquake-induced landslide that took place in an ancient rift lake, he said. “These trees were alive when the earthquake happened. They were buried very quickly, very rapidly after that, at the bottom of the lake, and then the lake (went) back to normal,” Dr. Stimson said.

Finding complete fossil trees is rare and much less common than finding a complete dinosaur, according to paleobotanist Prof. of Geosciences Peter Wilf at Pennsylvania State University, who was not involved with the study.

Prof. Wilf noted via email that the “unusual” new fossil tree was a relic of a time period from which there are almost no tree fossils.

“The new fossils are a milestone in our understanding of how early forest structure evolved, eventually leading to the complex rainforest architectures that support most of Earth’s living biodiversity,” Prof. Wilf added.

‘Very Dr. Seuss’

AI does not read much Dr. Seuss but it tries.

To King, a research associate at the New Brunswick Museum who found the group of fossils, the Sanfordiacaulis would have looked like something plucked straight out of Dr. Seuss’ most popular works.

“You know in ‘The Lorax,’ the trees have these big pom-poms at the top and narrow trunks? These probably have a similar structure. You have this massive crown at the top, and then it does narrow and paper into this very small trunk,” King said. “It’s a very Dr. Seuss-looking tree. It’s a weird and wonderful idea of what this thing could look like.”

But the reign of the Sanfordiacaulis was short-lived, the researchers said. “We do not see this architecture of plant again,” Dr. Stimson told CNN.

He noted that it grew in the early Carboniferous, a time period at the end of the Paleozoic Era when plants and animals were diversifying as they started to make their way from water to land.

Much of evolution is experimental, with success often measured by a species’ versatility, or ability to adapt to many different places and conditions.

The peculiar set of tree fossils presents proof of a “failed experiment of science and evolution,” Dr. Stimson added. “We’re really starting to paint that picture as to what life was like 350 million years ago.”

Looking forward

Researchers excavated the first Sanfordiacaulis fossil tree about seven years ago, but four more specimens were found in close proximity to one another few years later. - Courtesy Matthew Stimson © Provided by CNN

Fossils such as the Sanfordiacaulis are not just useful in helping humans understand how life changed in the past, they can help scientists figure out where life on our planet might be headed next.

The existence of this particular species suggests that trees of the period were starting to occupy different ecological niches beyond what was previously understood, according to the researchers behind its discovery.

Dr. Gastaldo sees this as an indication that plants — much like early invertebrates — were experimenting with how they adapted to the environment.

The earthquake that likely led to the trees’ fossilization also offers new geological evidence of what may have been occurring in Earth’s systems at the same moment in time.

“This is really the first evidence we have of [a tree] that would be between what grows on the ground and what would tower way above the ground,” Dr. Gastaldo said. “What else was there?”

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