Just as I finished the book, I read a news article about staghorn ferns. The ferns connect and communicate with each other, fulfilling different functions depending on where they are located on the trunk of the tree. The ferns high on the tree have developed fronds that direct rainwater into the centers of the other plants; those lower down have spongy leaves that collect that water; and some of the ferns don’t reproduce at all but seem to exist just to store water for the rest. Researchers call this kind of collective behavior eusociality. It is usually seen in bees and ants, insects that live together in colonies and have developed sophisticated divisions of labor.
Scientists are increasingly aware of interconnectedness in the natural world. Within and among species, the whole is more than the sum of the parts. Insects, ferns, and trees connect and communicate and protect themselves.
Long ago, a poet-priest wrote this:
No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
We are not isolated; we are connected to all of life, all of nature. If a tree falls and dies, we are diminished somehow. And we are only beginning to understand our connectedness and how essential it is – for the trees, the ferns, the bees and the ants. And when they suffer, the bell tolls for us, too.
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