Month: April 2017

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The Name of Things

The thirtieth:
Time to remember

Article published in May 2014

May (4)

While you walk in a street, you see a car that you have never seen before. You want to know its name, then you get closer to its rear part and see there, engraved in a tag, the model’s name.

With trees it is different. We use to know the name of some species, that are quite different among themselves: a pine tree, a palm tree or maybe a cactus. Other trees we can recognize by their fruits, like an apple tree or a mango tree.

Truth is that the amount of tree species in our planet is immense and its great majority has a similar shape. A professional who studies plants will know trees, and call them by their binomial name (scientific name). Example: Cedar of Lebanon, is called “Cedrus libani” by a botanics expert.

Ancient cultures assigned names to trees, which we still use nowadays and called them “popular names”. Case in point is the “Calophyllum brasiliense” (scientific name), which is popularly known in Brazil as “Guanandi” (indian name) or “Santa-Maria” (portuguese name).

It is important to know the name of something we want to protect and get to know better. A suggestion is to identify trees by writing their names in a handwritten style, by wrapping an aluminum wire. A good craftsman, using pliers, can carefully write this information for you.

You just need to put it on the ground and you will be able to read the name of a tree whenever you want to !

“I put down a tree because...

Tree got car dirty due to birds resting on its branches

Bird

Much attention has been given to trees when we talk about “nature” or about the “environmental issue”. That’s because when a tree is planted where no tree existed before, a cycle starts. A tree is an oxygen producing unit, a humidity stabilizer and a shelter to small animals.

Some of them look for a tree due to its shadow (that is the case of human beings…), others search it for protection, as a refuge. Birds many times build nests, or simply rest on its branches.

The cycle continues when this tree reproduce. Another tree is born, and then, step by step, a forested area starts to grow with plants and animals around it (insects, worms, caterpillars, squirrels, etc.) We say that an ecosystem is taking shape. This process keeps going until its height, when an intense utilization of the local space and resources takes place. This stage has been historically called climax community.

These concepts are described in detail in ecology books. We decided to talk about them, because they illustrate how important a tree is in the cycle of life, here on planet Earth.

On the other hand, we understand that many people like their cars. They are practical, moving people and loads from place to place. They might be beautiful or not, and may have cost lots of sweat and work from those who own them.

When a bird resting on a tree let its manure fall on an automobile and this scratches its paint job, the bird is not doing it on purpose. Birds are part of the cycle of life in our planet, while a car is a human invention (no matter how useful or beautiful it may seem).

The awning, another human invention, is a solution to protect a car’s paint job. And compared to the price of an automobile, it is a fairly inexpensive gadget. Now, a decision needs to be taken: spend some money to buy and install a car awning ? Or cut the cycle of life represented by the tree and its birds ?  Everyone’s conscience  should decide.