I find trees fascinating.
My favourite J.R.R. Tokein’s epic, Lord of the rings, shows the Ents. The walking trees.
Not just imagination.
There are trees that walk. When who there are meant and designed to be, is no longer supported by their surroundings, and not enough sunlight reaches them, they decide to grow “new roots” that move in the direction of the sunlight.
Socratea exorrhiza, tor simply the Walking palm is a palm native to rainforests in tropical Central and South America. Unlike other trees that have roots fully hidden underground, the walking palm has a higher root system that grows outwards from the base of the tree, several feet off the ground. Over time, as soil erodes, some of these roots die off, and new roots form. This is an evolutionary impulse and perfected design.
As the soil erodes, the tree grows new, long roots that find new and more solid ground and more sunlight. Then, slowly, as the roots settle in the new soil and the tree bends patiently toward the new roots, the old roots slowly lift into the air.
In a journal of The Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation, Dr. Bodley reported that the palm uses its roots to “walk away” from its germination point if another tree falls on the seedling and knocks it over. Or the conditions are not right.
As the tree trusts the wisdom of the new roots, it also patiently waits for them to take a hold on the new solid ground…and then..slowly, the old root withdraws, and the tree thus moves, a couple of cms at a time.. but move, it does.
The whole process for the tree to relocate to a new place with better sunlight and more solid ground can take a couple of years.
Slow but definite.
Peter Vrsansky, a palaeobiologist from the Earth Science Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences Bratisla, claims to have seen this phenomenon first hand.
I wonder, how we can learn from these.
Perhaps we need to also look at what are the conditions that are no longer supporting our grow. Roots don’t always have to be invisible. And don’t always have to be old.
New roots, can be trusted. Whether they are our newer generations or new beliefs.. new identities..
Just because things have been a certain way, does not mean it has to continue to be that, even when we see it is not supporting our growth.
