I wrote The Secret Life of Trees – here’s why the felling of the Sycamore Gap tree was so significant

Perhaps this once magnificent tree, reduced overnight to lumber, might become a symbol of a new enlightenment, writes ‘The Secret Life of Trees’ author Colin Tudge

We need new policies if we’re to save what’s left of the natural world (Getty Images)

Maybe good can come from the apparently senseless or downright malicious felling of the beautiful sycamore tree that for at least 300 years stood at the centre of the Northumberland Gap. Maybe its destruction will serve as a pivotal moment, when people born and brought up in this ultra-materialist, ultra-competitive, exclusively anthropocentric age finally undergo the mind shift that’s needed if we, humanity, are ever going to save what’s left of the natural world, and live in harmony with our fellow creatures.

If we changed our attitude then we, humanity, could realistically be looking forward to the next million years, for starters. That we are now staring Armageddon in the face is not only tragic. It is absurd. We can learn much of what we need to know from trees – far more and of far greater profundity than we ever can from politicians and their think tanks of lawyers and financiers who set the tone of modern society and run our lives.

We can learn first of all that we are not the only creatures that matter – we’re only one of an estimated eight million species, of which for all our efforts over thousands of years we have so far recorded less than a quarter, and we should not presume to strive for “dominion” over the rest as we were enjoined to do in Genesis (1:26).

More: we can learn that although all individuals matter, as we feel when one that we love is destroyed, no individual, whether human or arboreal, truly exists, or indeed can hardly be said to be real, in isolation. John Donne’s observation that “No man is an island” is true of all creatures, and indeed of everything.

In like vein, various African peoples embrace the concept of “ubuntu” – which in summary means that “I am what I am because of who we all are”. “Oneness” is the key idea – the idea that was never truly present in Christianity and has gone fatally missing from our modern, obsessively individualistic society. 

Oneness is manifest at all levels – psychological, spiritual, and indeed in the most recondite physics, with its concepts of quantum entanglement, and the idea that matter is concentrated energy, and above all perhaps with the notion of universal mind: that we do not generate consciousness de novo in our own wondrous but nonetheless pathetic heads, but that the mind is part of the fabric of the universe. We partake of, and contribute to, what is already there. 

In more earthly fashion, ecologists tell us that each and every apparently individual creature is in truth an ecosystem in its own right. Our own guts and outer surfaces harbour trillions of microbes that are essential for sound nutrition and general wellbeing. Each of us is a walking ecosystem. And every tree that is not drenched in pesticide harbours scores or thousands of different species of invertebrates, which in turn are food for many more creatures of all kinds.

All trees too form symbiotic relationships with many kinds of mycorrhizal fungi in their roots whose hyphae spread far and wide, and increase their range and versatility. Together the fungal threads form a network of indefinite extent that brings all the trees of all species in a wood into communion with all the others.

Overall, indeed, the more we observe the natural world the more we see that nature as a whole is essentially both cooperative and communicative

So they share water and nutrients – and also, crucially, share information. Each is aware of the plight of the others. So, in effect, the wood with its attendant fungi becomes one superorganism; and although it has no observable brain this superorganism behaves intelligently nonetheless, not simply responding to life’s exigencies whether it’s the onset of winter or attack from some predator, but preparing for them in advance.

Overall, indeed, the more we observe the natural world the more we see that nature as a whole is essentially both cooperative and communicative. Tennyson’s “Nature red in tooth and claw” has entered the modern psyche but in truth, although competition is a fact of life, cooperativeness is its essence. Darwin recognised this too, though he was a man of his time and overstressed its competitiveness.

Modern neoliberals in highfalutin vein like to argue that the no-holds-barred competitive global market is “Darwinian”, and therefore natural and therefore good. But this is bad biology, and appalling morality. A double whammy. Trees make the point admirably.

We need new policies if we’re to save what’s left of the natural world, and a different kind of economy that is not just a scramble for material advantage, and different kinds of leaders. But, above all, the sine qua non, we need a different mindset. Perhaps this once magnificent tree, reduced overnight to lumber, might become a symbol of a new enlightenment.

Colin Tudge is the author of ‘The Secret Life of Trees’ (Penguin 2005) and most recently of ‘The Great Re-Think’ (Pari Publishing, 2021). He now runs a website: www.colintudge.com