Spring is coming and the big ash tree behind the house has bowed out, swept away by illness and a strong autumnal wind. This is the first time that I will sadly see the flora bud without its presence. I would have liked to ask him his age before he leaves us, but it’s too late. The longevity of certain trees is enough to make the death-obsessed bipeds that we are jealous.
Posted yesterday at 10:00 a.m.
The Earth is full of these very old branches to remind us how short-lived human life is. I’m thinking here of this Bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) found in the White Mountains, California, and named Methuselah, which was credited with 4,854 years in 2010. Two years later, in the same area, a Pinus of the same species was found displaying the venerable age of 5,062 years . Before these two ancestors, we spotted in Sweden a spruce (Picea abies) whose roots are 9552 years old. But the longevity record seems to be held by a clonal formation called Pando, trembling aspen trees (Populus tremuloides) which are found in Utah and whose first ancestor would have taken root on Earth 80,000 years ago. This large plant community is made up of more than 40,000 genetically similar trees that are connected to the same root system. We are talking here about roots that saw the first humans land in America and that were there when Sapiens and Neanderthals rubbed shoulders in Europe.
If these living fossils could talk, a good part of America’s history would probably have to be rewritten.
If I could have talked to my old ash tree, I would have also taken advantage of our conversation to beg him not to destroy the landscaping of the courtyard of my bungalow over its entire width by going horizontal. I will miss him, because since I was little, plant life has fascinated me. I felt such an intense connection with the trees that it worried my late mother. She thought her whimsical boy was talking to the invisible world that makes dogs bark when darkness covers our savannah villages. This is how my grandfather sometimes said to designate those believed to be possessed by spirits in my original Serer tradition. Later in my life, Mom had come to understand that my attachment to this great baobab tree was also due to the presence of my great-grandfather buried under its foliage. As you get older, laying your hands on this tree has become a way of feeling traces of this ancestor in its trunk, its roots and its nourishing sap.
Even today, every time I take my children to Senegal, they know that they will have to go and say hello to the big baobab tree called Mpak Yaye, the story of which I told in a little book published in 2015. My son is always surprised to see me touch the paunchy trunk of the tree and walk around it before presenting him with the offspring that have come from the cold. In the language of the teenager he has become, let’s say that this ceremony is a bit weird and that he is always much more excited to meet the herd of zebus, the horses, the sheep and the goats of my parents than to be introduced to a baobab tree. What do you want ? Animals have always fascinated Sapiens much more than plants, because they remind us of our own existence. They are much more our alter ego than a fir tree or a baobab. Our brains have evolved to track what moves in nature. However, if the tree does not represent any threat, what moves in the undergrowth can be prey or a predator that seeks to kill us. This is how, in the course of our evolution, scientists say, the plant has become mere decoration for the brains of Sapiens.
Yet chlorophyll organisms are central to the existence and physical and mental health of the entire animal world. Plants have always fed, cared for, warmed us, protected us from the sun’s rays and urban pollution. It is to chlorophyll organisms that we also owe the timber and fossil fuels that have been at the center of our economic activities for perhaps a little too long, dare we say.
Faced with so much benevolence, humanity is like that adolescent who no longer sees all the sacrifices made by his parents to give him roots and wings.
An ingratitude which is explained by the fact that in the head of the teenager, the love of the parents is an unconditional acquisition. So, no more need to thank them and give them a little affection, because they are a kind of captives at the service of their offspring.
It’s the same relationship we have with the plant world. We trivialize it so much that we end up erasing it from our field of vision. I would like to point out here that the exceptions to this rule are numerous, because I fear that my friends Jean-Claude Vigor, Albert Mondor and Christian Messier as well as the many other friends of flora who read this text will feel insulted. But for the vast majority of humanity, the rule of insensitivity and involuntary blindness to the plant world applies. The proof, if you ask, even to biology students, what is the largest living being on Earth, a large majority will name the blue whale. As the vegan Stefano Mancuso reminded us, even the great naturalist and very famous British TV science popularizer David Attenborough fell into the trap. Yet, Mancuso recalls, the blue whale is a featherweight in front of a giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum), which weighs 2000 tons. Which makes it a living being at least 10 times bigger than a blue whale.
It is for this reason, moreover, that I underline the departure of my old ash tree, who had almost become my big brother. This tree has accompanied my daily life for a dozen years and saw my daughter born and grow up under its branches.
He was probably younger than the old baobab tree in our fields, but had reached the age of vegetable wisdom to merit my marking his departure.
My ash tree was one of those ancestors who saw snow, but who could no longer keep a cool head in these times when the climate is warming and pathogens are globalizing. He left destroying my yard, but he also left a big hole in my heart. Have you ever mourned an old branch that was part of your property, your street or your village after the pruners and stump removers passed by? How did you feel in front of this void left by the disappearance of the green giant?
My mother, who left four months ago, would certainly say: “So goes the world, Boucar! There is no life without mourning, because all that breathes on the Earth is called one day to die. We enjoy the benevolence of these great trees that our ancestors planted and cared for, and it is up to us to sprout and support the young shoots which, later, will shelter the next generations under their green foliage. After emptiness and sadness, a young plant replaces an old tree uprooted by age and disease. Watered with love and flanked by a tutor to guide his way, he will become great and benefactor. A baobab tree may be huge and imposing, but it grew from a tiny seed that took root moons ago. »