| Walt Whitman: "Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?"
Virtually everyone can name a favourite tree around in important times during our lives and where we have always felt comfortable. It could be an oak in Europe, a pine tree in Asia or America, a eucalyptus in Australia, a myrtle in Africa. This connection with trees is a great unifying feature of mankind. Many claim to see Shakespeare's tongues in trees. Wherever we are in the world, east or west, north or south, and in whatever language we communicate there is invariably a tree about which people think fondly and can talk positively. The Norwegians have expressed their gratitude and friendship for British help during the Second World War by giving a large Norwegian spruce (Picea abies) to the City of Westminster. It is displayed every year with much ceremony in Trafalgar Square after a long trip from the forests near Oslo.
 Ancient Egypt. Trees figured so prominently in the Egyptian view of the world that they came to embody their connection with Gods and other forces of creation. The sycamore tree (most likely the modern-day Acer pseudoplantus) was regarded, certainly by educated Egyptians and probably by many of the hoi polloi, as a manifestation of the goddess Nut (no relation to David Icke), who represented the protecting sky.
Willow (from the Salix family) associated with Osiris, who comforted those journeying to the afterlife. Sycamores and willows were invariably planted near tombs. Burial in sycamore wood coffins was commonplace for those traveling first-class into the next life.
Even in today’s Egypt, several millennia on, there are many myrrh trees (Comniphora myrrha), echoing the widespread mummification. Myrrh remained an important tree product up to the time of Jesus. Balthazar, one of the Magi, presented it to the baby Jesus as a gift. Given that Caspar, one of the other wise men, also presented a gift from trees, frankincense, this means two of the three products for the baby Jesus came from trees. (The third wise man, Melchior, was more generous and brought gold.)
Trees also filtered into the architecture of Egypt. Most notably this was stylized palm leaves carved at the top of columns which were designed to look like the crown of trees. So comforting was this symbolism that it has continued into the industrialized western world and the Corinthian style of columns. These show a certain form of leaves on the echinus, the top of the column, designed to appear if not tree-like then at least to echo the palm and its positive religious connotations with the resurrection – more of that later. Corinthian columns, by the way, have the notable advantage over Ionic columns of being attractive from any side, just like trees.
 Ancient Greece and Rome. Most of Ancient Greece’s gods had trees associated with them. Zeus, the father of the Gods, associated with two particular trees: a grove of sycamore trees (Acer occidentalis) at Olympia and a slow-growing but long-lived oak (Quercus family) at Dodona. The latter served as an oracle and it seems the rustling of leaves in time became regarded as the voice of Zeus. Whether the Greeks had discovered Magic Mushrooms is absent from the historical record.
So influential was the oak that it was also sacred to other Gods, Pan for example. The gracious myrtle tree was sacred to Aphrodite and in several myths Gods are transformed into trees and assume certain of their features: Atys becomes a tall and resolute pine tree, Smilax a long-lived and spreading yew, and Daphne the classic laurel. Depending on your point of view this transformation may represent good news or bad, I would not myself like to actually become a tree, but it certainly showed how significantly trees influenced Greek thinking, particularly as an agent of change, something that could meld bad into good or good into bad. A bit like alcohol then.
The Greek belief that the soul could be diffused into multiple trees of the same species is an intriguing idea that still dominates some thinking millennia after their culture was its height.
One of relatively few examples of trees appreciated for their natural beauty arises in the near east, in what is modern-day Iraq. They were built by Nebuchadrezzar II in honour of Amytis, who so missed her mountain home she sought comfort amongst gardens in the low plains around the Euphrates. Such was the impact of the trees included within the gardens that Diodorus Siculus, the well-known Greek historian writing several centuries later, commented the gardens had been ‘thickly planted with trees of every kind that, by their great size and other charm, gave pleasure to the beholder.’ It is a shame that this early effort at an arboretum has been lost.
Trees were relatively less prominent in Ancient Rome. It is well known that a fig-tree (from the Ficus family) was sacred to Romulus and grew near the forum. Additionally a sacred cornel tree (from the Cornus family) grew at the slope of the Palatine Hill, one of the central hills in Rome, and some sacred groves were also found. But in the critical features of their culture they were less inclined towards trees than the Greeks. That’s Italians for you, no sense of what’s important.
 Ancient Asian cultures. In the two great columns of eastern culture, China and India, trees also offered comfort, though as the Greeks differed from the Egyptians, so these Asian giants differed from the Europeans.
The Taoists of China, developing their thoughts around the 4th century BCE, considered the inside of the tree more closely than others. They saw a God-like force present, not necessarily as an uber-God but rather as a primal force from which the tree drew its being and its character. Becoming aware of divine origins was for them ‘great knowledge,’ to be distinguished from the ‘small knowledge’ of daily life.
I could not agree more. The Taoists were in a sense the first to take a more atheistic comfort from trees, looking at trees not as the ancient Greeks and Egyptians did, seeing within its trunk and its leaves a corporeal form of divinity, but rather as a messenger and symbol for man’s ethical behaviour. The Taoists in particular considered a trees flexibility and adaptability as a source of inspiration in avoiding conflict:
A man is supple and weak when living, but hard and stiff when dead. Grass and trees are pliant and fragile when living, but dried and shriveled when dead. Thus the hard and the strong are the comrades of death; the supple and the weak are the comrades of life.
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Book LXXVI
Although the Taoist view of trees was a more recognisable relationship with trees to the modern eye, it was in fact Buddhism in India a full two centuries earlier (6th century BCE) that first locked on to a particular species of tree.
In part this specificity arose because India had a long tradition of affinity to trees. This was based upon similar feeling to the Greeks, namely that trees served as ‘homes for visiting devas’, the Indian word for deities. Like Zeus and his oak, the gods were able to communicate through leaves.
But in part this comfort from one particular tree arose because Siddhartha Gautama achieved enlightenment under the Pipal or Bo or Bodhi tree – the common names have become more varied as the religion has grown. Today we know the tree as Ficus religiosa. And several millennia after Buddhism first established, both around the sub-continent generally and stretching into Tibet and the lower reaches of China’s plains, images of Buddhism are connected with this charming and thought-provoking tree.
Even today the Indian psyche remains closely connected with trees. It is still believed, for example, that the ghosts of brahmans live in fig trees, both pipal (Ficus religiosa) and banyan (Ficus indica), awaiting reincarnation and generally relief from their situation. I can sympathise. The Ficus family, by the way, is an extremely widespread one, with several hundred species, dozens of which are native to Asia. Among sacred trees, figs tend to be the most highly venerated in India.
Trees had, and have, a noteworthy impact in Japan also. The Japanese pagoda tree (Sophora japonica) and the cryptomeria were venerated at Shinto shrines, and still are in a certain form. Especially sacred was the sakaki, a branch which sticks upright in the ground and is represented by the shin-no-mihashira, or sacred central post. The Japanese plum or ume (Prunus salicina, sometimes referred to as a Japanese apricot) played a central role in Japanese culture for many centuries.
 Druids. The Druids in the 2nd century BC in Britain conducted their sometimes intriguing and often alarming affairs in groves of oak trees.
Amongst other things the Druids, whose name by the way means ‘known to oak trees’, believed the interior of the oak was the abode of the dead. Not the sort of place you wanted to accidentally end up and they went to amazing ends to keep their distance. (Charles II famously hid in the bowels of an oak during Britain’s last Civil War in the 17th century.) One of the Druids prayers indicates just how extensively they affixed mythical powers on trees:
We ask for the blessing of the Inner Guardians of the Order and of our Druid forebears that this Grove might become a truly holy and sanctified place.
We respect and honour and admire you, o trees, for you represent both Peace and Power.
Though you are mighty you hurt no creature. Though you sustain us with your breath, you will give up your life to house and warm and teach us.
We give thanks for your blessing upon our lives and upon our lands. May you fare well in this chosen place.
Amen.
Druids had an interesting inclination towards Hazel trees (Corylus avellana), which they considered to be the home of wisdom. Consequently they used it for various purposes, ranging from divining, the search for water, to encouraging fertility in women. Indeed a useful wood. Though of course the latter quality has not been able to bear quite the same scrutiny by modern science as the former.
Also vulnerable to scrutiny is the Druid belief that willow held the gift of prophecy. Next time you accidentally bump into a willow tree, please note.
As modern man we can probably most relate to the Druid feeling that English walnuts (Juglans rigia), which can exceed twenty metres or more in height with a spread of the same size, were worthy of deep respect. Though it is unlikely that we would, like the Druids, believe that it was dangerous to fall asleep under its shadow.
The Druids also believed that mistletoe (Viscum album), which was found in a hemi-parasitic (look it up) state on the branches of deciduous trees exactly like the oak, was to be cut only at a particular age of the moon. Normally this cycle arrived in the beginning of the year and, if cut judiciously, offered strong protection against all kinds of evil. Like Hazel, it also promoted fertility in women, one reason why mistletoe is used in today’s Christmas kissing traditions, though why we kiss under mistletoe rather than hazel has been lost in time.
 Christians. Catholics in the Philippines and in other countries still plant Frangipani (Plumeria rubra) around cemeteries. The flowering offers a symbolic metaphor of people that have made a contribution in this life but are now in the Garden of Paradise.
As is well known, once God had created light (on the first day) and then heaven (the second day) his third day was put to creating the earth, the sea and plants. This task was completed before creating sun, moon and stars (fourth day) and sea-life and birds (the fifth day). Animals and man arrived only on the sixth and final day of work. A case of saving the best for last, perhaps, but there is a certain aptness that trees emerged from God’s workbench before man. No surprise that elsewhere in Genesis, two trees, one of Life and one of Knowledge of Good and Evil, grow at the heart of the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:9).
Aside from this, though, trees in the Bible tend to be psychological comforters rather than forms of God. In Deuteronomy 20:19, God demands the chosen people not to choose to destroy trees ‘for thou mayest eat of them’. One might tend to agree in a desertified landscape. In Psalm 137 it is said:
By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept
When we remembered Zion
There on the willow trees
We hung up our harps
These willow-trees were probably the Euphrates poplar (Populus euphratica) rather than the more traditional Weeping Willow (Salix babylonica) which originated in China. Certainly one look at the poplar tells you it was a first-rate choice on which to hang your harp. |
