Do you think trees can talk? For me, I do. Sometimes, I feel myself like crazy when talking to people about the concept of talking trees. I always believe that every tree, every single of flowers, every plant – they do have families in their own and they grow up there with their families.

Apparently, when I did some little digging on this topic, people do research about how trees talk. The most famous one may belong to Suzanne Simard from Ted Talk. If you can have time, go listen to this talk. It opens my mind a lot about the wonderful world of trees and forest. Moreover, when you listen to someone’s passion about nature, your attitude about world may change. What is more wonderful when you know that what you believe from long time ago it is actually not some silly belief. Briefly, Suzanne did an experiment with birch, fir tree and cedar to check whether they can transit carbon to each other. Amazingly, birch and fir tree can communicate with each other and give each other carbon for support. Meanwhile, cedar got no change and no signal of communication with the other two. Suzanne also found out that this communication of the two trees could be done was because the network of fungi. The network of fungi is comparable to the Internet network of human where nutrition can be transferred between the same types of trees and also across different kinds of trees.

Enough science and logic here. But what we can learn that trees also have each own language like us. Science helps me prove that truly each plant has its own family and they can recognize each other through the network of fungi. They DO – CAN TALK. They live like a community – where they not only communicate, but support and collaborate. I remember once long long ago, when I learned about biology. It was said that trees in the forest have to compete with each other to get the most sunlight, so they have to thrive up and and up to be the highest one. But now I learn that they not only compete with each other, but they can cooperate – just like humans.

But more than that – I believe – if you listen carefully, you will hear how trees talk to you. I do not know where I read this, but “legends” say for trees, if we hug the trees, it is not a good way to show our affection to them, as they recognize those signals as a threat to them and they will use their energy to fight with those threats. In that case, they will change their system as well as they do have enough energy in case there is some real threats come up. The more I learn about trees, the more magical I find out about them. Trees – like us – also have thoughts and “who knows” may also have brains – like us.

Trees also have spirits – I believe or even so, I think everything has a spirit. This will open up a broader topic to talk about and if I have time, I hope I can write about that. I always wonder about the fantastic world of trees and forest when the night comes. I wish I could understand how they talk to each other. More random, sometimes, I feel my imagination is just out of world. Or because it is so out of world, I love Disney, Pixar and Ghibli movies a lot. They say all those movies are for children, but imagination of children is beyond our thoughts. No one forbids your dream and your imagination. And I hope my writing can help bring some knowledge or my experience to whoever reads them, and bring my imagination to the world.

One Fine April Night, Bloomington

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