Physicists: Trees talk! What are they saying?

Wisdom Quarterly; HuffingtonPost.com

(LINK: ABClocal.go.com/KABC)

Bodhi tree (exoticindiaart.com)

Something mysterious is happening in the Mojave Desert's Joshua Tree National Park. The reason may be grim, but the effect is beautiful.

 

"It's more than interesting, it's probably unprecedented in anybody's recent memory anyway," Cameron Barrows, a research ecologist at the University of California, Riverside, told ABC News.

 

He's talking about blooms on the Joshua trees that are larger [and more widespread] than locals say they've ever seen.

 

"I don't know what happened this year, but it's been an incredible display," Virginia Willis, a 15-year resident, told ABC. "It doesn't make any sense..." More

Thai Buddhist novices hang colorful flags on Bodhi tree (ChristyB30/flickr.com)

 

Trees "talk" and say more than thirst

Jacki Lyden, "All Things Considered" (NPR.org)

(Lee Berger/nationalgeographic.com)

A team of physicists at Grenoble University in France discovered that trees make different sounds when they are starved for water versus when they are simply thirsty. Dr. Alexandre Ponomarenko, the lead researcher, explains; hear a bit of the thirsty tree sounds.... Two out of three trees are dangerously parched the world over, at least that's what a study published in Nature determined late last year. Biologists looked at hundreds of tree species in 80 locations around the world and found... LISTEN

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