Published by: Digital Schools
Making Friends with Trees 3 - ABC Science Friction Podcast
Like so many things in life, unless you are really looking, you just won’t see.
I can certainly attest to that.
I walk almost everyday along the banks of the Yarra, and I look, I mean really look for things, and still make new discoveries all the time. The biggest surprise in the last few months was the discovery of the peppermint gum trees I had been searching for – and couldn’t quite figure out which was what for months – and then it dawned on me, my tree, my girl, she is a peppermint gum.
And in only a week I know for sure three distinct species, and now have samples of them on my dinning table in front of me.
My Tree, is a Peppermint Gum-tree.
My tree is of no great stature; she is a shaggy silhouette that blends into the other native gums staggered along the reserve at the river bend. My girl is rough barked and red, a thin leafed peppermint gum with two bodies erupting from one trunk. Her hair dangles blue-green; today, her buds are starting to bloom, and soon she will burst into flower.
Why I love that tree, I can not say.
We met quite some time ago, and when I walk onto her property, I reach up to her branches, or her neighbour, shake hands with her limbs, breathe quietly in the air she breathes out, and we fall into sync.
These trees are unique. They are medicine and old; I do not know how old.
But I am sure we are aware of one another – and the tears I had when I came home to her after been gone more than two months were from a heartfelt place.
I missed my tree.
And I know she missed me too.
'If trees could talk … what do you think they'd say to us? And are we willing to listen?
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/sciencefriction/science-friction-trees-peter-wohlleben-forests-nature/14021554
