Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 13:36:58 -0400
From: “Tom Glendinning”
Subject: Re: Kim Calhoun’s Post
I am glad to see courses offered to the public on tree care and maintenance.. As a landscape professional of forty plus years, I found this focus lacking for most of my clients. Trees provide the skeleton of our landscapes and are the dominant life form on the surface of our region, if left undisturbed as a climax forest.
Just one correction on the post: the largest single life form on the planet is a fungus.
The record holder is an Oregon fungus, Armillaria ostoyae, covering 2384 acres. The Oregon champ is estimated to be from 2400 years to 8650 years old.. The former champ was a 37 acre Armillaria bulbosa guessed to be 1500 years old and weigh 100 tons.
Us humans owe our lives and sustenance to these smallest of biota, including microflora and microfauna of many genus and species. There are more of these under our feet (in a normal, healthy soil) than there are all the mammals, birds, and insects on the face of the earth put together. We simply can not see or hear them.
While I am not faulting Ms. Calhoun’s message, I do want to point out what nature has provided and what it does for us in proper perspective. A Bible passage has a caution about “the least of these…”
Matthew 25:45.
Tom Glendinning
“It takes an intelligent fool to make things bigger and more complex……….. It takes a touch of genius to move in the opposite direction”
You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.–Wayne Gretzky