Sleeping Tree Study

I don't know if I can get onboard. If a tree has no consciousness, can it really go to sleep?

Years ago I read a really interesting book, The Physics of Consciousness, and I'll admit that much of it was over my head. But the author talked a lot about sleep and the role it plays in our physiology.

 

Very interesting. I am not surprised. Trees also communicate and aide each other. Communication is not restricted to verbal sounds.

From: http://www.positivenewsus.org/trees-communicate-with-each-other.html

Forest ecologist Suzanne Simard and her colleagues at the University of British Columbia have made a major discovery: trees and plants really do communicate and interact with each other.

They discovered an underground web of fungi connecting the trees and plants of an ecosystem. This symbiotic web enables the purposeful sharing of resources, that consequently help the entire ecosystem of trees and plants to flourish.

“The big trees were subsidizing the young ones through the fungal networks,” Dr Simard explains. “Without this helping hand, most of the seedlings wouldn’t make it.”

 

Its the awake ones I want to study...they're hard to catch though.

 

It's a catchy title... but not really sleeping.

The changes have to do with the water transport system which is motored by photosynthesis.
When the lIghts dim, the motor powers down, and the branches droop.

Rob

 

Rather like humans. We power down and droop also.

 

To me, "communicate" (in this context) has a connotation of purpose, and I think that what trees do fits God's purpose without the individual tree purposing its own actions/reactions. It's well documented that a tree under attack from an insect or disease will produce defensive substances, and those substances can be detected by nearby trees which then mount their own defenses before the attack reaches them. Most if not all trees depend on micorrhizal fungi to augment root hairs and vastly increase nutrient uptake from the soil; any course in forest soils should make clear the importance of such fungi being present. Trees also root graft with others of the same species and can thus share nutrients (and also diseases.) Some species, most notably the aspens, can grow as clonal groups, genetically identical stems arising from the same root system.