One of the nice things about settling down is the feeling that we’ve reduced our universe of possibilities, and so it’s easier to make plans. Some people say that the ability to anticipate is what makes homo sapiens unique. But a tree makes plans too, a plan of how it is going to grow over the course of its life.
Genetically speaking, no, a dipterocarp is not an individual tree—although it appears to be one. Who the tree is at the beginning of its life is different from who it is at the end. A tree is not a tree but many trees.
Can you really have a community when you don’t have roots? Is virtual interaction an equivalent substitute to real life interaction?
Every so often, all the dipterocarp trees in a forest canopy will flower together in a phenomenon known as mast flowering.
Because of the ideological slant of my alma mater, I graduated with the dogma “autarky is bad, trade is good” drilled into my head. But if dipterocarps can do so well on their own, would it really be so bad if we humans, with all our ingenuity, tried to buy local more often?
The most “successful” dipterocarps leave little left over for anyone else. They hog the light and suck up all the nutrients in the soil.