Some mind-expanding wisdom about trees.
[T]he color of organisms and objects is dictated by the color of the reflected light. And in the case of leaves on trees, this color is green.
But why don't we see leaves as black? Why don't they absorb all light? Chlorophyll helps leaves process light. If trees processed light super-efficiently, there would be hardly any left over - and the forest would then look as dark during the day as it does at night. Chlorophyll, however, has one disadvantage. It has a so-called green gap, and because it cannot use this part of the color spectrum, it has to reflect it back unused. This weak spot means that we can see this photosynthetic leftover, and that's why almost all plants look deep green to us. What we are really seeing is waste light, the rejected part that trees cannot use. Beautiful for us; useless for the trees.
Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees, 228
Unlike an animal, which carries its body from one place to the next, the tree
extends their body, they reach. Where an animal might slide, shift or slip through space, then, the tree permeates space, weaves into and around it. Only within the narrow field of Western human perception does the tree appear to anchor space, to provide the vertical lines of a static grid with which we can organise our attention. But rather than anchoring, the tree is constantly presenting themself, taking part, being kin, and endlessly responding to the feedback from such presenting. ... Not too far removed from the performer who yearns to be under the spotlight, the tree’s is a lifelong dance for the sun. Often, they will bowl out space in order to make use of a sphere’s every angle. But within this green bowl, the tree’s body is ceaselessly shifting to collect every available drop of light. Light, of course, is everywhere; there’s no need to walk, to move through it. What matters is increasing your surface area, the space for potential contact. This is a deeply sensual poetics of touch, permeation, transformation.
