Wonders of an Old-Growth Forest, Part 10: A Path among Giants | Warren Woods State Park, Michigan, USA
Facing northward and looking at the trail leading from Warren Woods Road to the pedestrian bridge over the Galien River.
My favorite scene in Christopher Nolan's recently released Oppenheimer is when, at about 53:51, the movie's protagonist comes across Albert Einstein and Kurt Gödel walking in the Princeton woods. The latter gestures upward with his hat in hand, and mutters, "Trees . . . are . . . the most inspiring . . . structures." Oppenheimer and Einstein move away and, for a brief moment, the camera dwells on the figure of the great mathematician standing alone. He peers up at the ramifying branches above him, transfixed, as though nothing else existed in the universe.
In a place like Warren Woods, nothing else does. The massive, gunmetal-gray trunks of the old-growth American Beeches (Fagus grandifolia) soar up around the hiker like the pillars of heaven. Time slows and human works shrink to insignificance.
From a biomechanical standpoint, these trunks, some of them 125 ft (38 m) tall, are each elaborate transportation systems containing within them concentric zones of:
- dead heartwood that forms the central structural cylinder;
- xylem tissue, mostly composed of dead, hollowed-out cells that conduct water and nutrients from the soil up to the leaves, the solar-powered food factories; and
- phloem tissue of living cells that move photosynthates in the form of sugars for use throughout the plant and for storage as starch in the roots.
The Beeches are joined by equally lofty and ancient Sugar Maples (Acer saccharum). At lower left, their much younger progeny form the thicket of saplings at lower left. But to take a gander at one of their grander elders, see Part 2 of this set.
To see the other photos and descriptions of this series, go to my Wonders of an Old-Growth Forest album.
Wonders of an Old-Growth Forest, Part 10: A Path among Giants | Warren Woods State Park, Michigan, USA
Facing northward and looking at the trail leading from Warren Woods Road to the pedestrian bridge over the Galien River.
My favorite scene in Christopher Nolan's recently released Oppenheimer is when, at about 53:51, the movie's protagonist comes across Albert Einstein and Kurt Gödel walking in the Princeton woods. The latter gestures upward with his hat in hand, and mutters, "Trees . . . are . . . the most inspiring . . . structures." Oppenheimer and Einstein move away and, for a brief moment, the camera dwells on the figure of the great mathematician standing alone. He peers up at the ramifying branches above him, transfixed, as though nothing else existed in the universe.
In a place like Warren Woods, nothing else does. The massive, gunmetal-gray trunks of the old-growth American Beeches (Fagus grandifolia) soar up around the hiker like the pillars of heaven. Time slows and human works shrink to insignificance.
From a biomechanical standpoint, these trunks, some of them 125 ft (38 m) tall, are each elaborate transportation systems containing within them concentric zones of:
- dead heartwood that forms the central structural cylinder;
- xylem tissue, mostly composed of dead, hollowed-out cells that conduct water and nutrients from the soil up to the leaves, the solar-powered food factories; and
- phloem tissue of living cells that move photosynthates in the form of sugars for use throughout the plant and for storage as starch in the roots.
The Beeches are joined by equally lofty and ancient Sugar Maples (Acer saccharum). At lower left, their much younger progeny form the thicket of saplings at lower left. But to take a gander at one of their grander elders, see Part 2 of this set.
To see the other photos and descriptions of this series, go to my Wonders of an Old-Growth Forest album.