Giant tree begins to "'talk" to science

California has the world's biggest (General Sherman) and tallest trees (secret redwoods).

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Nature is strange. Just when you think...

We can now hear one of the largest and most ancient living organisms on Earth whisper with the tremble of a million leaves echoing through its roots.

The forest made of a single giant tree known as PANDO (Latin for "I spread") has 47,000 stems (all with the same DNA) sprouting from a shared root system over 100 acres (40 hectares) of Utah, USA.

Here, this lone male quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) gradually grew into a massive 6,000 metric tons of life.

Do the California elders have something to say?

After possibly 12,000 years of life on Earth, this massive plant, whose tree-like stems tower up to 80 feet (24 meters), surely has plenty to say.

And recordings released this year let us "hear" it like never before.

"The findings are tantalizing," Lance Oditt, founder of Friends of Pando, said when the project was unveiled in May.

"While it started as art, we see enormous potential for use in science. Wind, converted to vibration (sound) and traveling the root system, could also reveal the inner workings of Pando's vast hidden hydraulic system in a non-destructive manner."

Sound artist Jeff Rice experimentally placed a hydrophone inside a hollow at the base of a branch and threaded it down to the tree's roots, not expecting to hear much.

"Hydrophones don't just need water to work," Rice said (acoustics.org/listening-to-the-largest-tree-on-earth...). "They can pick up vibrations from surfaces like roots as well, and when I put on my headphones, I was instantly surprised. Something was happening. There was a faint sound."

Amid a thunderstorm, that sound increased – as the device captured an eerie low rumbling (ecosystemsound.com).

"What you're hearing, I think, is the sound of millions of leaves in the forest, vibrating the tree and passing down through the branches, down into the earth," Rice explained when he presented his recordings to the 184th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, as reported by The Guardian.

The hydrophone also captured the thumps from tapping on a branch 90 feet away, even though that sound was not audible through the air at that distance.

The massive tree Pando in Utah, green aerial outline of forest "creature" (ScienceAlert/MSN)

Pando in the fall, Fishlake National Forest, Utah

This supports the theory that Pando's root system is interconnected, but a proper experimental setup would be required to confirm the sound wasn't traveling through the soil.

Such shared root systems are common in colonial quaking aspens, but the size and age of Pando make it unique. While quaking aspens can reproduce through seeds, they seldom grow from them as pollination is rare since large aspen stands are usually only one sex, being clones of the same individual.

Friends of Pando invited Rice as an artist in residence to try and better understand this strange, enormous entity.

Oditt hopes to use sound to map Pando's tangle of roots. "The sounds are beautiful and interesting, but from a practical standpoint, natural sounds can be used to document the health of an environment," said Rice.

"They are a record of the local biodiversity, and they provide a baseline that can be measured against environmental change."

Rice also recorded Pando's leaves, bark, and the surrounding ecosystem.

"Friends of Pando plans to use the data gathered as the basis for additional studies on water movement, how branch arrays are related to one another, insect colonies, and root depth, all of which we know little about today," said Oditt.

When a tree spirit speaks to science, it uses a mic

Sadly, this magnificent tree is deteriorating, leaving researchers concerned that Pando's days and all the forest life it supports are numbered.

Human activities, including clearing and slaughtering predators [because, you know, relocating them would be just too much trouble] that keep down herbivore numbers, eat away at this ancient being.

This is all the more reason to listen to "The Trembling Giant" while it can still share its secrets. The recordings were presented at the 184th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America.

An earlier version of this article was published in May 2023. More

In Buddhism, trees can talk?

The Buddha was a figurative giant among men

Buddhism is for the trees, for it began as a forest tradition, as the Scythian (Gandharan) wandering ascetic Siddhartha Gautama set forth from his kingdom, which he renounced. He headed East towards proto-India, to the kingdom of Magadha. He lived in forests there, until he set off deeper into the woods with five companions on a quest for enlightenment.

It didn't work. He was going about it all wrong, doing penance, extreme austerities (tapas), and engaging in self-mortification of nearly fasting to death.

One day, after so much exertion and a sense of urgency to find the Truth and so littler nourishment, he keeled over dead. At least the forest spirits, the bhumi devas, thought he was dead. One fairy said to another, "He's dead." The other corrected the first, "No, this is just how these yogis behave." 

"Are you sure he's alright? It looks like he starved to death," one spirit said to the other, who answered, "Let's pour our deva food (shining one's light body nourishment) into his pores."

"No," Siddhartha declined, thinking that it would be a form of lying to go around as if he were fasting when in fact the devas were feeding him. So the future Buddha got up and went to another tree to continue his spiritual efforts.

Siddhartha shriveled and was withering away with tapas

This massive shade provider was an old sal tree. But weak and malnourished, he could not compose and still his mind to gain samadhi.

A woman came by with food as an offering to the old tree, and she was amazed at the sight of this grizzled, wizened, ana withered shell of a handsome man now appearing in front of the tree. "It's the tree spirit (dryad) manifesting to receive this offering!" she said as she ran back to her mistress Sujata.

Sujata could hardly believe what her maid was telling her, so she went to the tree to see for herself. And there the tree spirit (the future Buddha) was just like the maid had been saying.

Sujata saved the future Buddha by sharing food.

With her own hand, she made the offering, and Siddhartha ate, realizing that it had been foolish to punish the body for the mind's doing. This body could be a vehicle to enlightenment rather than always being seen as an obstacle to spirituality.

The women nursed him back to health at home, disgusting he fellow celibates, his five companions. They abandoned him. Soon, he was well again, and he set off further into the forest, into an awe-inspiring grove that later became famous as Enlightenment Grove (Bodh Gaya). Here the Buddha searched for a tree and found a massive, spreading source of shade and fruit.

Sujata is the heroine of the story, told here carved in stone on Borobudur Temple wall, Java.

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Fasting is very good, but severe austerities are not.

He sat under this tree, the oldest documented tree in the world (surviving on an island on the tip of modern India in Sri Lanka, born of a cutting from the original and restored to what is thought to be the same spot, next to a reassembled Maha Bodhi Vihara ("Great Awakening Temple") in the modern state of Bihar (Vihar'), India, so named because it once had so many viharas (Buddhist abbeys) dotting the land that one would have thought the whole state one massive Buddhist temple complex.

Under this tree, his Bo tree, Siddharta had a great awakening and came to be called the "Awakened One" or in the ancient language of Magadhi (Pali), a widely spoken form of Sanskrit, the Buddha.

Forty-five years later, when it came time that he decided to recline into final nirvana and pass away, making an end of all rebirth and suffering, he chose twin sal trees growing in the boondocks, in a place now called Kushinagar near Gorakhpur, India, close to the border of Nepal.

During his life, the Buddha gave many amazing and profound teachings, but one in particular is striking. He once told the tale of an old grove of trees, where an ancient elder stood. One day a soft creeping vine fell at its feet and began to grow, embracing its trunk as it moved its way up to the canopy.

Thai Buddhist temple mural of Sujata's dana

The dryad, the spirit of that tree, delighted in the soft touch of the vine as it spread upward. Coming to know of this, an assembly of spirits formed a line and began to pay their respects to the tree as if it were in hospice care preparing to die.

The magnificent old tree was offended and asked why the other tree spirits were speaking to it this way. They revealed what the old tree had not yet realized: It was doomed. This "soft creeper" was no friend, no delicate female hand delightful to the touch the way it seemed.

It was, in fact, his doom, attached to him parasitically, aiming to exploit his magnificence in the grove and, rather than delighting in its soft touch as it spread, the old tree would be wiser to see it for what it was: an attachment clinging to him to his detriment. The wise old tree realized it and eventually died.

Did a tree speak? Did a grove of trees have this conversation or was the Buddha merely using a simile to powerfully illustrate how the things we as humans and devas thoughtlessly delight in bring us to ruin? We prefer to think both.

• Tessa Koumoundouros, "Haunting sounds made by world's largest living thing recorded" (sciencealert.com via MSN.com); Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Pat Macpherson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly