The intelligence of trees

We often talk about the good things that grow on trees, but what about trees’ native intelligence? The excerpt below is from an NPR story, which you can listen to or read on NPR’s web site.

Hurricanes topple plenty of trees, but when you think about it, the more amazing thing is that many trees can stand up to these 100-mile-per-hour winds.

Now a French scientist has come up with an explanation for the resilience of trees. And astonishingly, the answer was first described by Leonardo da Vinci 500 years ago.

Leonardo noticed that when trees branch, smaller branches have a precise, mathematical relationship to the branch from which they sprang. Many people have verified Leonardo’s rule, as it’s known, but no one had a good explanation for it.

French physicist Christophe Eloy wasn’t particularly interested in trees, but he does specialize in understanding how air flows around objects — objects like airplane wings and such. So he decided to see whether he could solve the mystery of the branching trees.

What did he discover? When a tree grows new branches, the surface areas of the daughter branches add up to the surface area of the mother branch.

Read (or hear more) at NPR.

–TR