Excerpt from “A Tapestry of Browns and Greens”
In graduate school, I took a field course in tropical biology in Costa Rica. Whenever we struck out on a rainforest trail, my eyes went upward to the plants and animals that I saw in the treetops, located far from the reach of those who were stuck walking on the dark, damp forest floor. At that time, in 1979, almost no one had studied – or even climbed into – the forest canopy. Many of these tropical trees have unnervingly long straight trunks with no branches for 100 feet, rendering my childhood tree-climbing skills useless. But my interest was piqued to explore and understand the treetops. I learned mountain-climbing techniques to climb trees from Don Perry, an early pioneer of forest canopy access, and was on my way to making a niche for myself in the barely existing – but emerging – field of forest canopy studies.
It took some struggles with my graduate committee to help them understand that climbing trees could be serious science, rather than “Tarzan and Jane stuff”, as they called it. Eventually, they helped me carve out a dissertation project, a comparative study of the biomass held within the epiphytes – the plants that grow perched on tree branches and trunks. My fieldwork took place in the spectacular temperate rainforest of the Olympic National Park and the tropical cloud forests of Costa Rica. Both forest types support massive loads of epiphytes, though the types and species of plants are very different. For four years, I identified, marked, and tagged all the trees in study plots at both sites, and collected epiphyte samples to calculate their mass relative to the whole ecosystem.
In the more than 25 years that followed, I continued this academic approach to nature, collaborating with students and colleagues to produce over ninety scientific papers and three scholarly books about canopy ecology. We have learned that treetop versions of traditionally terrestrial invertebrates – beetles, ants, springtails and even earthworms – are found in this canopy-level soil, living out their entire life cycle high above the forest floor. We have measured the amounts of nitrogen that the epiphytes intercept and retain from rain, mist, and dust, which can be considerable. A study that involved perching on platforms in trees for six hours each day revealed that birds of the cloud forest use epiphytic flowers and fruits for over one-third of all their foraging visits, which documented the importance of these plants to arboreal animals. In summary, these little-known and structurally small plants that live their lives high above the forest floor have tremendous ecological importance for the forest as a whole; they are critical threads in the integrity of the complex tapestry of rainforest ecosystems.
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During my academic appointments, I received scientific grants, carried out fieldwork, gave talks at meetings, and published scientific papers, just as my peers did. However, I sensed that this world of the ivory towers was somehow incomplete. I also recognized that the growing distance between scientists and non-scientists, and the widening gaps between humans and nature were two grave societal problems that most scientists did not seem to address. As my career progressed, I found myself compelled to reach out to other sources of information outside of academia that seemed equally valid to those inside it – sources that went beyond the scientific aspects of nature, and involved recognizing and understanding the medical, recreational, and religious values of nature. During that stage of my work, I became open to the idea that other ways of knowing might help me better understand the complexities of nature.
In 2000, I set out to understand the multiple values of trees and to link these with public audiences outside of academia. I began with the value of health, our most basic need. My younger brother, a physician of internal medicine, invited me to speak to his medical students about the relationships between trees and health. In my lecture, I presented examples of how health practitioners use trees for medicinal products. For example, the bark of the Pacific Yew tree (Taxus brevifolia), which grows in the Pacific Northwest, contains taxol, a compound that has proven to be an enormously effective anti-cancer compound. This recent discovery was preceded in history by numerous other tree-related medicines. As early as the 17th century, quinine was extracted from the South American cinchona tree (Cinchona officinalis) to effectively treat malaria in South America. In addition to the chemical compounds trees provide to keep humans healthy, they also function to reduce stress in psychological ways. In the early 1990s, Roger Ulrich published scientific studies showing that patients who had a view of a tree outside their window recovered more quickly and with fewer complications than patients sustaining the same operation who had views of concrete walls. These studies have, in recent years, been applied to hospital and designs, and several companies now provide artificial tree scenery consisting of backlit panels that can be hung on walls and ceilings of examining rooms and waiting areas. Thus, the many health values of trees can be woven into the tapestry that describes the total significance of trees.
Recreation values can connect nature and science to people. Several years ago, my students and I created a “TreeTop Barbie Doll”, which provides an alternative to the traditonal “girly” dolls – one that embodies exploration, strength, and an image of a young woman interested in forest science. An illustrated booklet about canopy biota of the Pacific Northwest accompanies TreeTop Barbie to engage young girls in science as well as outfits. I also realized that skateboards – as well as many others sports such as hockey, pole-vaulting, golf, and riflery – depend on trees because the equipment they require is composed of wood. We designed tree art stickers that are affixed to skateboards to remind the youthful users that trees are connected to what provides their swoop-flying action in the bowls and curves of their local skateboard park.
Urban youth are a segment of the population that are hard to reach when it comes to interesting them in nature. To connect young people from the inner city with science and fieldwork, I stretched far outside of academia and engaged a young rapper named C.A.U.T.I.O.N. to come out to the field with field scientists – a marine biologist, a forest ecologist, and an entomologist – along with 30 middle school children from Tacoma, Washington. Each day included field time – with the rapper singing about the trees, clams, and bugs we encountered – and sound studio time – when the students made up their own rap songs about their field experiences. At the end of the week, the kids had cut a CD, which they presented to their families and peers. Their insights also served to open my eyes to the many colors of nature that they saw with fresh eyes in the familiar (to me) forest of my own college campus.
The element of religion is a powerful force in our society, but one which generally has a low profile in academia. However, it seemed to me that places of worship might be excellent places to both teach and learn about aspects of nature. Members of congregations set aside time, dress carefully, and open their hearts and minds to consider matters such as living in an upright way, caring for fellow humans, and marking important moments of life with meaningful ceremonies. I hypothesized that communicating how people of different faiths describe trees in their own holy texts, and in their own places of worship – churches, synagogues, and temples – might inspire its followers to be better stewards of forest ecosystems. I also believed that I would learn from the congregation about their views of nature and trees. By generating discussion on their turf instead of mine, the people in the pews might be more receptive to ideas that trees are critical to human survival and well-being.
There were two critical parts of this approach. First, I had to be open about learning from non-scientific sources. Second, I had to consider multiple religions without judgment, just as Ganesha and the Menorah sat side by side on my family’s home altar. Before taking the pulpit, I acquainted myself with the tone and practice of each group by attending their services as a guest. After several months of simply listening and observing services of different faiths, I offered clergy a sermon on trees and spirituality, not as a scholar of religious studies nor as a particularly religious person myself, but rather as a scientist interested in understanding trees with my intellect, and as a human being who cares about forests. The 22 congregations I addressed ranged from fundamentalist to progressive, and included Episcopalians, Baptists, Unitarians, Zen Buddhists, Jews (Conservative and Reform), Catholics, Methodists, and interfaith organizations. My source materials came from downloading and searching the Bible, the Talmud, the Qu’ran, as well as Hindu and Buddhist scriptures.
Because it is the dominant religion, I began with the Christian tradition and spoke in churches. I downloaded the Old Testament from the web and did a search for quotations that contained the words “tree” and forest”, which I categorized into ways trees are used or viewed (e.g., practical use, adornment for temples, analogies to God, location markers). I integrated these into three topics for my talks: a) trees as providers of the needs of followers; b) how trees connect humans to the divine; and 3) the ways humans incorporate trees into spiritual practices. Congregants listened attentively, participated in discussions after the sermon, suggested texts and hymns that I had overlooked, and passed me on to other churches. Some continued conversations with me by telephone and email.
On one occasion, I spoke from the bima (meaning “high place,” the raised platform from which the holy scriptures, the Torah, is read) of the Jewish synagogue in Olympia, Washington. One of the things that struck me was how rarely I had been in a synagogue, and yet how comfortable I felt there. Something of my mother’s teachings about the holidays, coupled with the memory of those packages from my Bubby made me feel a connection to the sounds and smells of the synagogue. When I spoke to the congregants about links between trees, spirituality, and Judaism, I described my childhood tree-climbing activities, which led me to opine that Tu B’Shvat, the celebration for the New Year of the Trees, was the best holiday the Jews invented. Its beginnings were strictly secular. The Torah required farmers every year to give a tenth of all crops grown to the priests of the Holy Temple, and Tu B’Shvat marked the date when those taxes were tallied. Gradually, the holiday became a day of celebration of trees, and of Jews’ connections to nature. In Israel and other countries, the day is celebrated with tree-planting ceremonies or by giving money to plant trees. Through these actions, modern Jews affirm a future filled with fruit, shade, and beauty for their children. Sukkot, another Jewish holiday, involves the building of a little house in the backyard, made from tree branches and sticks, in which to eat, host guests, and reflect on the time when their ancestors used such shelters during their 40 years of wandering in the desert after the Exodus from Egypt. The action of building the structure connects them to their important past and their shared beliefs.
Just as easily, I was able to talk about the role of trees in Hindu religion in the places of worship I visited, drawing from the teachings of my father. He described the early inhabitants of India as perceiving a godly element at work in places of natural beauty, especially in trees. Centuries ago, many villages set apart sacred land for the “tree spirits,” or vanadevatas. Would-be parents propitiated the spirits by tying toy cradles to the branches of trees in sacred groves. Damage to the sacred grove, especially the felling of a tree, might invite the wrath of the local deity, causing disease, disaster, or the failure of crops. Through ebbs and flows of many political and religious systems, spiritual beliefs have been the prime force that preserved these groves into modern times. All of the more than 13,000 sacred groves in India have a residing deity. The value of sacred groves now stretches far beyond the spiritual. They also protect plant and animal species that are valuable for food, medicine, and spiritual uses. In many areas, they are the last remaining threads of native, wild biological diversity in a country of one billion people.
Over the past ten years of this type of outreach to non-traditional audiences, I have learned much more about trees than what came from ecology lectures and the tomes that fill the library stacks. Science is a domineering force if you choose to take it on, often leaving little room for the dream works of a Mary Oliver or the quiet prayers of a Buddhist monk. But I have come to believe that there is room for more than simply doing another experiment, getting another grant, writing another scientific paper, testing another hypothesis to the 0.05 level of significance. The insights that came from these “other” sources, have, for me, coalesced around the reflection that there is a valuable affinity between trees and people, the word affinity from the Latin word affinis, which indicates a relation by marriage. Although we are not of the same family, we can consider ourselves as being married into each other’s families, with the challenges, responsibilities, and benefits that come with being so linked.
As a Professor of Biology at the University of Utah, DR. NALINI NADKARNI studies the plants that live in rainforest canopies, supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society. Read more.
This excerpt from her essay “A Tapestry of Browns and Greens” was originally published in the anthology The Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity and the Natural World (2011, Milkweed Press), edited by Alison Hawthorne Deming and Lauret Savoy. Reprinted with permission from Milkweed Editions.