orchard.it

Wood Wide Web

Posted by in Nugget from the Internet

This is another great one from www.radiolab.org… Everyone knows how trees grow – right?   Sunlight + CO2 + Photosynthesis = Carbon (in the form of sugars) + O2 We’ll it turns out that this is only half the story. A tree made only of carbon wouldn’t grow more than a foot high before flopping over like a dying tulip. The structural elements that build trunk and limbs come in as nutrients through a tree’s root system – just like we eat vitamins and minerals to build healthy teeth and…read more

0

The Prometheus Story

Posted by in Nugget from the Internet

Donald Currey had always dreamed of being a botanist and in 1964 he was a post graduate studying the effects of the The Little Ice Age on vegetation at the University of Carolina. The evidence he needed was to be found in the rings inside old trees which indirectly record the weather each year of the tree’s life. Armed with a special core drill from Sweden, Currey explored the forest of Nevada’s Great Basin National Park and randomly chose a tree to sample. He climbed it’s lower branches, positioned his…read more

0