‘A tree breathes without lungs, feeds
without a mouth, digests without a stomach, sees without eyes, hears
without ears and, most exceptional of all, reasons, communicates, and
solves problems without a brain. It is even able to remember and solve
problems more effectively each time they arise. That is, it is capable
of learning. It is all this without having a brain, or something
similar, to which these tasks can be delegated. In other words, trees do
not have a centralised organisation, everything in them is spread out
and not delegated to specific organs. We could define their structure as
modular ...
In a sense, the way they are structured is the quintessence
of modernity: they have a modular, cooperative & distributed
structure without command centres, able to perfectly withstand
catastrophic & repeated predation without losing functionality. They
are basically every engineer’s dream. Next time you look at a tree,
stop & think about it’
From ‘Plant Intelligence’ by the plant
neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso
Photographs of Somerset trees in winter by David Williams