Super Trees – How Great Can They Get?

Dartmoor-Tree

Feeling powerless right now? Go hug a super tree. Feeling like doing something positive? Go plant a tree. Want to work out where is the best placement? Do our Permaculture Course. Every tree is a complex organism. It works all its life to provide clean air, healthy soil and a diverse community. But even more amazing, meet the trees with superpowers.

A ‘Super-tree’ produces flammable nuts, has leaves that can burn wet, produces abundant fruit, supports a web of life, grows large enough to live in, provides timber that never rots, survives thousands of years, supports a wild-life of fungi underground, and holds steep slopes on mighty mountains. Many can regulate the temperature around them by moving liquids up and down the trunk, dropping leaves, and expiring vapours to cool the air. Remarkably, some trees can communicate through their root systems for miles underground. Mature trees can even send out warnings and protective chemicals to protect younger trees.

Special Tree Powers

Trees provide Fuel, Food, Oils, Forage, Structural, Conservation, Carbon sequestration, Soil managers, animal barriers, and Fungal & Microbial habitats.

1. Energy

You don’t have chop a tree to get fuel. Solid fuel from trees sometimes falls naturally. The windfalls include flammable leaves, cones, nuts, fallen branches, harvested sap, and resin

David Holmgren writes that solid fuels are the most useful energy resource globally. We can plan for their harvest, they are easy to cut, require little training to use, convert easily to energy, are hard to steal or vandalise, and renew themselves.

a Chinese kang uses small twigs to cook food and heat the bed
The efficient Kang uses small windfall twigs to cook food and heat the bed in the next room.
Rocket stoves and gasifiers also use windfalls rather than lumbar.

Eucalyptus leaves have the power to burn whilst wet. Even more amazing, diesel and petroleum trees have nuts that burn like candles. Meet the Brazilian tropical rainforest tree Copaifera langsdorffii commonly known as Capaiba (Tupi Indian word cupa-yba). It is several powers. This ‘diesel tree’ is also a soil-enhancing legume. The resin is tapped sustainably like maple trees. Another, Pittosporum resiniferum, provides a form of n-Heptane.

In the end, most trees produce woody material suitable for the generation of BioGas fuel. This means alternative wood-based fuel is available without killing trees. Coppice or pollard instead of felling.

2. Food

Malay apple - giant lillypilly
Giant Lillypilly – Malay Apples

More than 80% of the world’s food species came from the rainforest. Fruits, nuts, tea, coffee, chocolate and alcohols such as cider come from the bounty of trees.

The permaculture food forest usually intercrops fruit and layers of nut trees. We use strong food trees to support vine crops and short-lived trees act as nurse trees to maturing species. Tall evergreen trees are positioned in the shaded corner of the orchard and often used as wind-breaks.

3. Oils

Herbal, medicinal, culinary and cosmetic oils come from trees. These include Eucalyptus, Pine, Olive, Avocado, Walnut, Pecan, Almond, Cashew, Macadamia, Frankincense and Myrrh and Neem.

Teatree is a hard-working fungicide (ok, it’s a shrub but deserves a mention.) Coconuts are not really trees either but they are tall, fragrant, yummy and an excellent make-up remover.

Furthermore, tree oils such as Tungoil (Vernicia fordii) when mixed with the natural cleaner and thinner Limonene (oil of citrus fruit peels) is a beautiful floor polish and useful for coating and preserving woodwork.


4. Forage

Fodder is an excellent food for grazing animals. The art of fodder planting almost forgotten conventional farming. Many trees provide excellent, nutritious fodder for animals. Fodder from trees is available during dry years. Fodder trees can be grown as living fences,(applied at Avonstour) hedges or as shade trees in the corners of paddocks. The tree roots can extend deep into subsoil, mining minerals that grasses may not reach.

Cattle browse and shelter beside fodder trees. Their manure is happily filtered by the abundant layers of forest shrubbery and leaf litter beneath. Forage Examples include: Oak, Poplar, Acacia aneura (Mulga), Albizia Julibrissa (Leguminous, deciduous, fast growing, regenerates) Dodnaea viscosa (Hop bush).

Above all, fodder trees provide food, shade, windbreak, pollution filter and living fences. Forage Examples include Oak, Poplar, Acacia aneura (Mulga), Albizia Julibrissa (Leguminous, deciduousfast growing, regenerates) and Dodnaea viscosa (Hop bush). Better still, plant a guild of native trees to support wildlife and local fungi.

This Boab tree has a front door. Australia has few deciduous native trees. The Boab has multiple uses. It is long-lived, deciduous and stores water through dry seasons. It is also medicinal and most parts are edible including the powder in the seedpods and the yummy fruit.

5. Structural Trees and Timber

Hay fork made from tree branch

Many trees grew large enough to shelter a traveller. Plato wrote about trees in his homeland, Greece, that were too big to put his arms around. Few large trees remain there. Shipbuilding claimed most of the great trees of Plato’s era. But still today, trees war and poverty continue to destroy trees.

Throughout the eras, material from trees has provided us with complete houses (roof shingles, frames, and plastered wattle walls), canoes, ships, furniture, garden tools, the first cars, musical instruments, cricket bats, rainboots, clothing (silk, rayon, viscose) and much more.

6. Wildlife Habitat – Our Bank of Genetic Capital

The conservation of wildlife habitats makes good economic sense as well as ethical sense. Healthy forests as a bank of diverse genetic material. Most of the plants, insects have not yet named. Their potential lies undiscovered. Surviving forests require nothing from mankind except respect. They are a self-supporting bank of unknown resources.

Humanity may be able to create clean air, water, soil, and mine more nutrients. But we can’t recreate genetic material.

If, and when, we did discover how to recreate genetic material, a lot of creativity, science, and energy would need to be invested. It is cheaper to safeguard the genetic material existing today.

Flowers grow on the slender tall trunk of Davidson's Plum  a recently discovered bush tucker superfood
Davidson Plum – a recently discovered superfood

7. Carbon Sequestration

holding a seedpod. These illawarra flame trees are sprouting out of a single pod.
Self replicating resource

Trees are the cheap. They work day and night as long-term storage units soaking up excess carbon. They help mitigate or defer global warming and slow climate change. But recent research is showing that some trees are hitting their limit of absorption. This startling situation demonstrates we need more trees to combat the growing climate crisis.

Long-living trees are excellent guardians of carbon. Many trees live thousands of years (including olives) however, clonal colonies of trees have the potential to be immortal.

The oldest known clonal tree is Pando, an 80,000-year-old colony of Quaking Aspen. Unfortunately, the tree releases sequestered carbon when it dies. So, we need long-living self-replicating plants.

8. Soil Management

Trees hold the banks of steep slopes, trap centuries of silt, create their own rain and micro-climate. Forests release particles that seed the clouds to help make rain. In the garden, this process of soil enrichment can be accelerated with Huglekultur, Synergistic gardening, and Biochar.

Garden Mounds with Wood

Austrian, Sepp Holzer, pioneered Huglekultur for raised beds. The wood in the base of Huglekultur mounds holds moisture, builds fertility, adds height. This provides more surface area for intensive gardens growing vegetables and herbs. Similarly, Synergistic garden mounds, developed first by Emilia Hazslip, can also incorporate wood. Position mounds to harvest rainwater, deflect frost, create various microclimates, and slowly move the water through the system.

Schumaker College has raised garden mounds as pioneered by Emilia Hazelip

Soil Enrichment with Wood By-products

Biochar, formerly known as Terra preta, is low temperature-carbonized biomass commonly made trees. For thousands of years, it has been the lifeblood of native south-American intensive agriculture. They convert lumbar into a habitat for the accelerated growth of soil micro-organisms. Activated charcoal also sequesters carbon.

Biochar can be made as a by-product of heating the home. We make biochar in our fuel stove using a loose lidded container inside the firebox or by covering the flames with ash before going to bed. Ash from the fire is separated from the charcoal. We turn the charcoal into biochar by crushing it in a bag when cool then adding it to the compost toilet mass.

Ash is another value byproduct. It is an excellent source of insulation material. Or it can provide valuable nutrients and pH modification to garden beds and poultry house floors.

9. Animal Barrier Systems

Hedging is natural fencing and
habitat for natural pest controllers

Hedges are the strongest, longest-lasting, and most durable fences. Nature is free and choatic. But not all hedges need to look messy. In fact, when the edges are neat, most people think the garden looks tidy. Few people look inside a hedge. Behind the scenes, diversity thrives.

Hedges can be trimmed to sit up off the ground, allowing small creatures to pass underneath but block out larger animals, people, and cars.

Hedging in England is an art form, with quirky regional variations. In Dartmoor, the trunks of young trees are half-cut and pushed horizontally. Similarly, each sapling gets half-cut and tipped onto the previous sapling. In time, the side branches start to grow upright. This method makes a thick and durable fence providing habitat for wildlife such as insect-hungry birds.

10. Fungi and Microbes

Incubation converts tree sugars into energy. Paul Stamets shows how mushrooms can save the world by providing a usable energy source for domestic and commercial systems.

Lichen and Moss on a chainsawed tree in the exquisite Tarkine forest NW Tasmania
our top trees: mulberry, fig, limes and lemons, guava, bananas (actually a tall grass), Grape vine (hangs in the macadamia trees, Hibiscus, tea tree (these are just shrubs but big in our eyes, lemon and aniseed myrtle. (excellent tea)
Our top ‘trees. ok, they aren’t all trees, but they are big enough to win our praise.

Learn Permaculture design with us to plan your future.

One Tree Singing

What Does a Tree Do All Day?

One tree performs many functions

Every day a tree goes to work. It flexes and grows, repairs and renews. It draws nutrients to the top, distributes water to the leaves, and when the season is right, it flowers and fruits. Lucky for humanity, the fruit is just the cherry on top. Let’s celebrate how forests serve to keep humanity happy.

Undercover, the roots help collect nutrients, keep a grip on soil and rocks, search for new territory, negotiate pathways, and often exchange benefits with other roots and fungi. The roots even whisper to other like-minded tree roots.

Up above, the treetops are busy attracting pollinators and friendly fertilisers (birds and mammals), deflecting damaging wind, keeping warm, and sheltering their young saplings. Impressively, a tree can regulate the temperature around itself by regulating the moisture content in its trunk. This is an additional feat on top of the great thermal mass quality of wood.

photo taken at australian tropical foods nursery QLD https://www.capetribfarm.com.au/
Tropical fruits capetribfarm

A tree is a busy organism but it is never alone. Every tree belongs to a community of forest organisms. Even in death, the tree decomposes and recomposes itself through its relationship with forest organisms.

Oblivious of their importance to humanity, the tree absorbs CO2 and releases life-giving Oxygen. But surprisingly, recent research shows that many trees, worldwide have hit their limit and are now shouting a warning.

Specialist Trees

Dartmoor forest

There are some highly specialised. ‘Super-trees‘ powers ranged from diesel nuts, leaves that can burn whilst wet, abundant fruit, or communities of creatures. Occasionally a tree can be big enough to shelter a family, provide timber that never rots, live for thousands of years, support kilometers of fungi underground, or hold steep slopes of mighty mountains. Many trees communicate for miles underground.

There are at least 10 types of trees that humanity depends upon. The yield is potentially limitless due to the capacity for the exponential growth of a forest. They provide fuel, food, oils, forage, structural, conservation, carbon sequestration, soil management, animal barriers, and fungal & microbial habitat.

Energy from trees

a Chinese kang uses small twigs to cook food and heat the bed.
Chinese Kang uses small windfall twigs to cook food and heat the bed

Fuel from trees comes in many forms. You can choose from solid fuel (wood) and flammable leaves, bark, oil and ‘diesel’ nuts. Solid fuel comes from windfalls (cones from nut pines, fallen wood) or harvest cuts (thinning, or felling). David Holmgren writes that solid fuels are the most useful energy resource globally because: we can plan for their harvest, they are easy to cut, require little training to use, convert easily to energy, hard to steal or vandalise, and renew themselves. Some timber ie. Eucalyptus leaves will even burn wet. Diesel and Petroleum treesburn like candles.

The Brazilian tropical rainforest tree Copaifera langsdorffii commonly known as Capaiba (Tupi Indian word cupa-yba), a legume, is called the diesel treeThe tree is tapped sustainably like maple syrup. More powerful n-Heptane is distilled from the oil of Pittosporum resiniferum.
Another form of fuel is BioGas from coppiced tree material via composting for methane collection.

Food and Alcohol on Tap

dancing ferments

More than 80% of the world’s food species came from the rainforest. The permaculture food forest diversifies the yeild. It usually mixes fruit and nut trees. Because, unlike the commercial orchard, the permaculture fruits do not all have to ripen at once to go to market. In fact, it is handy to have a longer period of harvest. This extend the season and avoid gluts. In addition, the food forest trees have a variety of roles. Strong food trees support vine crops. Whereas short-lived trees act as nurse young canopy trees. Tall evergreens huddle as wind-breaks. While a deciduous pear gently shades the balcony.

Oils from Forests

There is a myriad of herbal, medicinal, culinary, and cosmetic oils from trees. Most famously Frankincense and Myrrh. Common oils today include Pine, Eucalyptus, Olive, Teatree, and Neem.

Out on the Forest Farm

Forests for animal forage and fodder are all but forgotten by modern farming. Many varieties excellent, nutritious fodder for animals. Forming living fences, hedges, they shelter as well as feed farm animals. In return, the cattle and sheep fertilise the fodder trees. In addition, forest shrubbery and leaf litter filter any excess nitrogen. Forage Examples include: Oak, Poplar, Acacia aneura (Mulga), Albizia Julibrissa (Leguminous, deciduousfast growing, regenerates) and Dodnaea viscosa (Hop bush),

Living Fences

Hedging technique in Dartmoor U.K.

Animal barrier systems such as hedges are stronger, longer-lasting, and more durable than fences. Hedges might look chaotic, but the borders can be trimmed. The chaos can have boundaries. Hedges permit small creatures to pass underneath and larger animals/people and cars to stay out.

Thinking Bigger

Structural Products

Many trees were big enough to shelter a traveller. Even Plato wrote about trees too big to put his arms around. Good old fashioned lumber (wood for building) is still in business. Valued attributes include flexibility, lightweight, thermal mass and pliability. Traditional buildings in Japan use wood to build earthquake-safe housing. Wood has more to offer. Recently, an 18 storey Skyscraper was built out of engineered wood in Norway.

Big Network, Big Potential

There are kilometers of fungi in just a cup of soil. These Fungi & Microbe powerhouses can convert sugars into energy sources more readily than machines. Paul Stamets shows how mushrooms can save the world.

Indirect Benefits To Humanity

Giant Lilly Pilly

Conservation/Wildlife Habitat The preservation of habitat makes good economic sense as much as an ethical sense. If nothing more, we can keep healthy forests as a bank of diverse genetic material because most of it we have not yet recognised it’s full value to us. Machines might be able to create clean air, water, soil, and find nutrients but our prosperity still depends upon nature’s bank of genetic diversity.

Carbon Sequestration is the long-term storage of carbon dioxide or other forms of carbon to either mitigate or defer global warming and avoid dangerous climate change. Long living trees are excellent guardians of carbon. Many trees live thousands of years (including olives) however, clonal colonies of trees have the potential to be immortal. Pando, an 80,000-year-old colony of Quaking Aspen, is the oldest known clonal tree.

Forests Build Their Own World

Forests create and protect soil. Trees will halt erosion by holding banks of steep slopes and trapping centuries of organic matter. They even create their own rain by trapping moisture with the leaves seed the clouds by releasing fungi and other particles. Best of all, forests can create a beneficial micro-climate.  

Energise Your Future

Growing Transition

Last century, humans used wood to make steam, to turn pistons that turned wheels on tracks to move people from station to station. Before that, we would grow grain to feed to horses that pulled the wagons of cut trees we used to heat our homes and cook food. These technologies still work, that in the future the technologies will be cleaner and more efficient.

Today, we use a lot of electricity. one of the biggest challenges for the conversion to natural energy use is finding a form that is compatible with the system we already have. Nicole Foss talks about our limitations due to the current dependence on particular forms of energy. At the moment, mankind is dependent on either electricity from an aging grid network and on liquid fuel or gas for transport. Biogas and other energy transition technologies allow us to convert existing equipment such as gas cookers and tractors.

Looking ahead, transition technologies will connect us more easily with the type of energy that nature offers.

Plant Now. Enjoy in 2050.

Forests are facing three big threats. The first threat comes land clearing, the second from global warming and thirdly, increasing public fear of fire.

Making space for nature begins with making space for trees. Understanding the different products and services that forests offer and using trees to fit well with the urban space will create healthier cities. “Traditionally human settlement has set about to conquer nature and exclude other species. It is time to realise that part of our ecological happiness comes from other species.” Evolutionary biologist Prof Menno Schilthuizen

What Can One Do?

People have the power to increase urban forests because ownership of most of the open spaces is actually in private hands. We learn from nature by reconnecting, getting involved in citizen nature projects, and building the ability to observe. Ultimately, we begin to partner with nature.

Do we need a reason to reforest the earth? Perhaps we should do it simply because we can.

"It is the range of biodiversity that we must care for - the whole thing - rather than just one or two stars" David Attenborough

Permaculture mimics nature. By observing how nature faces challenges, we design for smarter and efficient uses of her resources.