What Are Your Trees Saying?

Psalm 96:12-13a
“Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein: then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice before the Lord.”

Can trees communicate with each other? Psalm 96 speaks about the “trees of the woods rejoicing”, and Isaiah 55 speaks about the trees “clapping their hands.” Is this just figurative language or can trees really have emotions and even praise God?

Actually, science has known for some time that trees are able to communicate with each other in several ways. Rapid communication can occur downwind by releasing chemicals called pheromones into the air from the leaves. Slower communication can take place using similar chemicals through their root systems. But now, a physicist in Oregon has accidentally found yet another way trees communicate with each other and very rapidly.

Ed Wagner was studying the flow of sap in trees and started finding voltage readings in the trees. With more research, he discovered that trees generate a standing wave formation that not only travels in the tree, but also through the air to other trees. These waves, he finds, correlate with what the tree is experiencing. The blow of an axe not only causes a tree to send out strong waves, but the surrounding trees respond with a similar, but less emphatic reaction.

Can tree communication also praise God? Now that we know that trees can literally talk to one another, there is every reason to believe that they also literally praise their Creator, just as Scripture says.

Notes: The Associated Press. “Physicist says trees Communicate.” The Register-Guard, Feb. 7, 1989, p. 7c.
Photo: Use one of these felling axes, and the tree is sure to send out strong wave formations to neighboring trees. Courtesy of タクナワン. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
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