A Tree falls in the forest: an exercise in permaculture observation and pattern finding

This whole thing was too long to include in my post about brush on contour, but I still wanted to publish it for anyone who is interested.

So since you are already here, let’s just quickly look through a permaculture lens at what happens when a tree falls in a forest with no human intervention –

creeeeeaaaaaakk …. BOOM!

First, the impact shakes the ground and blows up dust – much of that dust are fungal spores perfectly timed and co-evolved to colonize the downed wood. Also many mycologists think that the vibrations from the impact stimulates the subterranean mycelia to send up the reproductive structures of the fungus – the visible mushrooms to sporulate while there is a fresh host.

The roots heave up the soil around them, opening a crater in the soil.

Some roots are severed and left underground where they were, including the tap root that has often penetrated dozens of feet into the subsoil. 

Horizontal branches pierce the soil. The tangled canopy branches create a mess of branches on the ground (habitat and protection for prey critters to avoid predators).

In time, the tree begins to decompose. First, it dies. Biologically that means that its cells die, their cell walls break down, the water stored within the cells leaks out, and the tree shrivels and becomes brittle. Is xylem and phloem weaken, releasing the outer bark from the cambium. The space in between the bark and the tree is the home to a whole food chain – ants, woodlice, beetles, centipedes, grubs and larvaes of all kinds. Eating the tree, eating each other, reproducing, depositing waste, carrying fungal spores and bacteria along the length of the tree. Ushering in the decomposition of the heartwood of the tree. Soon the birds come to feast on the insects of the tree – pecking and boring holes deeper into the wood, bringing seeds they carried in their bellies from other parts of the forest wrapped nicely in little fertilizer packets dropping onto freshly agitated, open soil that has newly been exposed to the sun. The bears come too, to rip it up and get at the grubs. Their fertilizer bombs are loaded with blueberry seeds, enough to start a whole new grove.

This new pocket of sunlight in the forest is a huge opportunity for the plants in the immediate area. Oaks and other slow growing trees like to bide their time in their early decades, gathering strength in their roots, waiting for a moment like this to shoot up and outcompete their faster growing, but shorter lived companions. The water that falls on this spot has also created new opportunities. The tree no longer has the monopoly on the absorption of the water so opportunistic plants now have more access to the resource. Water lingers in the root crater creating temporary ponds that certain species of frogs and salamanders have evolved to mature their eggs in these secret hidden pockets in the forest away from the keen eyes of egg eating predators and the variability of current in natural streams. But not all the eggs are kept hidden and they feed creatures, and not all the hatchlings live long enough to reproduce. And hatchlings have even more nutrition than eggs.

The tree itself begins to regulate the water in the area. By its falling, it has created a depression in the soil that is as long as the tree was tall and as wide as its diameter. Water fills that depression and seeps deeply in the soil. None of it is lost to evaporation because it is completely shaded under the tree. That constant moisture is perfect for the mycelium growing underneath and penetrating through the tree. The tree itself becomes a sponge as it’s decomposition continues.

In time, the entirety of the tree becomes soil once again. I say “once again” because all the mass of the mature tree was created by using the energy of the sun to create sugars via photosynthesis and assembled by uptake of the nutrients present in the soil. Nature doesn’t “haul off” the biomass of the dead, it recycles into the system. And since squirrels are always stashing acorns and forgetting where they did so, the seeds of the future are already sown.