To Trees and Carbon, Yes

Rarely am I excited by losing trees. We took down both Chinese (Lifesaver shaped) peaches. They grew well, but produced lousy fruit that attracted green fruit beetles that ate the fruit, bored into the bark, lay larvae, and flew off. So I’m told. Except for the big green beetles. In death they provide a wee bit of firewood. Those trees bothered me. Helen agrees: those Chinese peach crab apples or something bothered me. I like Georgia, USA peaches.

After a heavy spring topiary trim, our oversized fire thorn died. It had been a weed for several years until it liked our yard, sprang into a 20′ umbrella (it grew like ocotillo for three sick years of neglect) and looked ridiculous. Our garden no longer resembles the place it was when the fire thorn first struggled as a small highlight bush. It is so lovely, gone. But as plants, especially as trees, they are missed. I love trees.

“Carbon dioxide is the chief hormone of the entire body; it is the only one that is produced by every tissue and that probably acts on every organ.” –Yandell Henderson, Ph.D. – Cyclopedia of Medicine (1940)

You may be interested to know that about half of all the carbon on earth is sucked into the ocean. About half of what remains is stored in trees, bushes, bulrushes and roots. The rest is mostly CO² in the air and in everything that is alive. Carbon dioxide is critically important to people.

Carbon dioxide used to be considered a medical hormone. Now considered a para-hormone, or something that acts like a hormone. It is not necessary for the body to produce it, so science now considers it hormone-like. CO² performs and assists in thousands of vital (para)hormonal functions like growth, pH levels, development, breathing, metabolism, and reproduction. Or, as a recent chat with CoPilot exposed, CO² “is not a biological substance that functions within the body.” It is not, might be, or is a hormone. Take your pick. The confusion is natural and always deceitful

As far as being “poisonous,” CO² is not. It is an asphyxiant, meaning it replaces oxygen. Like water, it blocks breathable oxygen.

The other thing about trees is that they take carbon dioxide from the air, replacing it with breathable carbon. How much of each actually exist surprises almost everybody:

N² = 78.00% of our atmosphere.
O² = 21.00% of our atmosphere.
CO² = 00.04% of our atmosphere.

The last thing I will say about trees for now is that whatever you grow, harvest and reap from a tree is half carbon. It remains half carbon. Chairs and tables and studs in walls are beautiful sequestered carbon. Each tree that comes down is a new opportunity to suck more carbon from the air.

The last thing I will say about carbon for now is that you must understand it much, much, much better than I do in order to believe there is anything “dangerous” about it as a hormone or atmospheric gas.

I want to live among trees. I want to glorify their creation by the Creator. I want to experience the carbon cycle in my house and backyard. In the country, wood lots are acres farmers reserve for trees, to generate heat, build structures and furniture, to mulch the land, and to compost into stable organic soil to grow their trees and garden.

That finally brings me to the point. What trees should I plant in place of the peaches? Helen wants evergreen. I want hardwood. We should probably go for bushes.