The subordinated tree

Cassian Humphreys has some thoughts on mimicking environmental subordination and understanding the subordinated tree.

When I use the word ‘arboriculture’ I do so with intent: ‘arbor-I-culture’. I emphasise the ‘I’, the ‘tree-I culture’ as a reflection of the fact that to culture trees we have to be in service to them.

This article considers the optimal tree and the most integrated human being in illustration.

Ideals

Though human credentials can give guidance and perspective, they also get in the way, especially when educational frameworks promote closed thinking or a righteous viewpoint. Being righteous has us fixed like a tree’s apoplast, blocking the depth of integration symbolised by the tree’s dynamic symplast and an open human mind.

I describe human dynamism as stillness, sensitivity, creativity, compassion, discernment, critical thinking, courage, the ability to surrender and to take a stand for the truth. To give perspective on the optimal human being I pose these traits as being Christ-like qualities, though I leave religion to the masses.

Education that teaches dualistic thinking (school-age and university education are prime examples) reinforces a fixed mental structure, often described as the ego – a fixed form of identity. This is defined in spiritual science as the self-idolising mind. The ego is led by the illusion of comfort. The greatest curse of our human times is being enslaved to the idea of comfort, especially when the experience of getting there is the opposite. Subordination to governing bodies that nurture life on Earth would be very different.

Self-idolisation is a phenomenon promoted and popularised in the mainstream. Proponents are the financial elite, the bankers, politicians, scientists, teachers and mass media. Those who promote the propaganda fail to know the truth of themselves and encourage the same in us. In this preoccupation ego is celebrated as the
new god, with artificial intelligence – AI – its latest protégé.

I believe AI seeks to give rise to its own body, as if hijacking ours is not enough.

Science

Although science can be a gift to seeing, unless we subordinate our sense of grandeur we are blind to seeing the real magic: creation.

In the obscuring of our view of natural intelligence we are imprisoned like those inert woody plant cells of the apoplast. Natural intelligence has been directing life on Earth from the first single-celled organism through to the highly advanced body of cells called Homo sapiens – us.

As a 25-year arboricultural writer I have been making sense of trees based on patterns or cycles that repeat, as well as observations in light of the human record. My drive has always been to see for myself first, to listen to the interpretations of others second, and then respond. This interest has largely involved interpreting Australian trees in reflection of the British, American, German and Australian science I grew up with.

This article is a musing on the human condition as a means to illustrate the tree. This is where I believe science and creation converge, as does the tree that unites Heaven (atmosphere) and Earth (rhizosphere) via its body, connected to those interfaces by its very cells.

I see Shigo’s figure-8 model of the tree as a pump (ref: Fig 3) as the perfect analogy of the cycle of life on Earth, with the plant-pump as its beating heart. This analogy embodies us too, with our earth-bodies made of the same elements found in nature. In the same way the trees unite Heaven and Earth, so do we.

Tree subordination

So with nature as the guide, let’s consider how trees are subordinated, and the subordinate tree.

Trees as forest organisms are designed to occupy air space, to share resources, reproduce and support other life-forms. Should they overextend and break, their bodies are surrendered back to the nutrient-cycle we call life.

Forest trees fail young when elongation, or a lack of taper driven by light competition, is a primary cause of structural failure. This largely occurs between the nodes. Internodal failure is both triggered by the environment as it is mitigated by it.

Greater understanding on the form of the optimal tree  – as opposed to the subordinate tree – came with recognising field pasture trees (ref. Fay), but also the environment that subordinates them (ref. Lloyd Jones). These trees are better tapered with multiple inner canopies, and through form they collectively attenuate or dampen force flow. Subordination as realised via the study of bonsai occurs at the level of the twig, the pinching out of terminal buds creating diversification (forking), and multiple peripheral losses via the buds keeps trees hedged at the periphery with shorter nodes.

On landscape trees we can see this when we study wind-pruned coastal trees. As with buds subjected to frost, insect and bird activity, woody plants are naturally subordinated. When you take a large tree with an elongated woody crown and give it a diversified or hedged outer edge, in time, with repetition (what we can call ‘training’), you get an unbroken, subordinated tree, ideal for urban environments where people congregate. A tree which is diversified at its periphery produces a smaller leaf size, grows internal canopies, and improves on taper, while sustaining optimal energy production and outliving its elongated forest cousin that breaks.

When the subordination occurs at the twig the tree effortlessly compartmentalises the damage (ref: Shigo).

Though we only see the macro failures, overlooking the micro, the environmental subordination of trees for posterity is one of nature’s success stories. The longest-lived specimens, naturally subordinated with full crowns, I love to call ‘alpharised’.

Best cuts are smaller

Crown-reduction, as recognised in old-school arboriculture, involves cuts of 8.0cm or more. Because of the loss of a large surface area of leaf/ symplastic tissue and the oxygenation of heartwood, tree decline accelerates exponentially. Hence the bad media on heavy crown reductions.

Light reductions that target buds, twigs and the smallest-diameter branches keep cuts in dynamic tissue below the 3.0cm mark. Ideally no more than two per cent to three per cent of a tree’s original height or spread is removed when subordinating a tree, with a maximum leaf surface area sustained for photosynthesis. Volume reductions are driven by tree-veteranisation, or pre-existing tension and break-out failures. Cuts into symplastic tissue can be made between nodes where the wind naturally hedges small-diameter elongations.

Volume reductions

As climbers with hand tools, first-stage volume reductions are closer to the five-per-cent mark, as to work safely we can’t work much further out on the periphery unless we’re using EWPs. Climbers skilled with pole saws fare better. Subsequent doses can be less as woody-taper and safe-climber accessibility improves. The first five-per-cent reduction is the heaviest, with pruning cycles being two to five years, extending to as few as three doses to achieve subordination. This strategy is great for training non-veteran trees to remain that way, as well as keeping veteran trees green while sustaining habitat – this of course suits the ancients, too.

The heaviest volume reduction I’ve done was 10% in crown-height. That’s a maximum 4.5cm to 5.0cm per cut (I don’t like to cut any larger). This was on a veteran hardwood with hollows up to 50cm in diameter and wall thicknesses down to 15%.

Hope for the future

Artful subordination may be in part genetic, but appears to be mostly an environmental influence.

We all know what the unsubordinated human looks like. I pray humanity can look to the alpha trees for guidance.