my friend, franko, would like to know this:

1. Do tree branches (while taking position in space) consider condition of their environmant? Do they consider another branches of the same tree as their environmant?

2. is there a communication between branches and their environmant? And if there is, what kind of connection is that - is that energy traveling, or information, and in what form?

3. Who is the subject there? A stem? It examines environmant as we do with our senses? Or is it environmant? It heaves the tree and it's branches out of the ground?

I'm not just a lousy translator, I'm interested in that too.

Some things I remember from college (many moons ago...).

Plants have so-called plant hormones. Much like human hormones, they are secreted in one part of the plant and have an effect on another part (or even another plant). Some plant hormones cause defense mechanisms to be triggered, for example. I believe it's accacia trees that 'warn' each other when they're being munched on, i.e. a chemical is released by the tree being eaten from which causes others to produce more poison.

The growing tip of a plant (the apex) in particular secretes hormones, notably to suppress the development of other buds. So for a certain distance below the tip of the plant you will not see any sideshoots developing due to 'apical dominance'.

I would expect branching is guided by some similar process.

sanja wrote:Do tree branches (while taking position in space)...

First, it's important to know that a branch is not a single entity that grows into any shape. It's a collection of little segments which grew at different times, at different angles, from different points of origin on the segments which had grown the year before. Each segment grows only briefly and will not grow longer again or change shape after that, but has several points on it from which new growth can begin next year. I'm attaching an animated image to illustrate. Each color shows the segments that get added in a single year; red first year, organge next year, green next year, and blue next year. Notice that once an old piece has grown and stopped growing, it doesn't move; the next year's mass just comes out from it.



As you can see, this would create an impossibly large number of twigs; I had to draw them shorter near the end of the sequence to fit them in even though in real life each year's growth isn't necessarily shorter than the ones before, and that was only with four years to illustrate. So you might wonder how it can all fit in in real life, and why a tree's oldest, thickest branches aren't covered in crowded little twigs and buds. It's because most of the buds and twigs that are produced on any tree, on every branch, die. The shape we end up seeing is dictated by which ones die and which ones remain.

sanja wrote:...consider condition of their environmant? Do they consider another branches of the same tree as their environmant?

The buds/twigs with the least exposure to sunlight are usually the most likely ones to die. Any one twig's exposure to sunlight is partially controlled by shade from the other twigs and leaves around it. So the most likely ones to die are the ones far inside the tree near the middle, and the ones on the lowest branches.

sanja wrote:is there a communication between branches and their environmant? And if there is, what kind of connection is that - is that energy traveling, or information, and in what form?

Plants react to soil moisture & pH, gravity, the direction and intensity of light, and, at least in some species, possibly pheromone levels from nearby plants. If light comes more from one side than the other side, the plant will lean in the light's direction, or grow bigger branches on that side. If light comes mostly from above and not much from the sides, which is usually because the plant is crowded by other plants next to it, then they will grow tall and skinny, as if trying to reach and stretch above each other. In some species, that tall-&-skinny growth pattern seems to be driven not just by light but at least partially by pheromones, which are chemicals that one plant creates and releases into the air, which other plants around react to. Also, if part of the soil around the plant has better moisture and pH, the roots will grow more on that side, as if reaching toward the best moisture and pH the plant can find. And plants react to gravity to keep their roots growing down or out but not up and their above-ground parts growing up or out but not usually down. A particularly drastic version of that is the dominant apex, which Sgt Kelly mentioned:

Sgt Kelly wrote:The growing tip of a plant (the apex) in particular secretes hormones, notably to suppress the development of other buds. So for a certain distance below the tip of the plant you will not see any sideshoots developing due to 'apical dominance'.

It's not that there are no sideshoots. It's that they go sideways instead of up. The bud on the top of the plant goes up and tells the rest to go sideways. (They must detect gravity to "know" which is which.) In a species with strong apex dominance, there is a single long vertical trunk, and the primary branches are perpendicular to it. Some species have less or no apex dominance, so various buds on any branch could point in different directions. Those species have less or essentially no distinction between trunk and branches, and can become more bushy in shape, with a split trunk or no apparent trunk at all, and with various branches growing at various angles from horizontal to nearly vertical.

sanja wrote:Who is the subject there? A stem? It examines environmant as we do with our senses? Or is it environmant? It heaves the tree and it's branches out of the ground?

The plant does the work itself, detecting and responding to environmental conditions. The proof is that different species grow in different shapes and sizes even in the same environment; each species is programmed to respond to the environment differently.

However, there is a catch in how plants "react". In some cases it's not a matter of sensing anything and having a response prepared for it. It can instead be just a matter of laws of physics. For example, a branch or twig that gets less sunlight than another one gets doesn't need to be able to detect how much light it's getting in order to respond by growing less or self-aborting; it just grows less or dies because it can't grow any more with the amount of sunlight it gets. It's like a person whose food gets rationed to half as much as (s)he ate before. You wouldn't detect the decreased food supply and respond by getting smaller; you'd just get smaller because, with half as much food, you couldn't possibly stay the same size or get bigger.

In addition to what others have said above, I thought I'd add a general principle and an example of it. The general principle is that plants need light to survive (they convert sunlight to energy via photosynthesis), and as such will usually seek through hormonal triggers to increase their access to sunlight. So branches, and the whole tree itself, will grow towards uncrowded regions that have more light availability. An example of this, that is the basis of forestry practices, is planting trees closer together to encourage vertical growth as opposed to lateral growth. Vertical growth leads to longer straighter boles which are more desirable for timber.

anthroban wrote:

Delvo wrote:First, it's important to know that a branch is not a single entity that grows into any shape. It's a collection of little segments which grew at different times, at different angles, from different points of origin on the segments which had grown the year before. Each segment grows only briefly and will not grow longer again or change shape after that, but has several points on it from which new growth can begin next year.

Are you quite sure the underlined is correct?

Yes. At the core of even the tiniest twig, once its initial growing season is done, is dead tissue just like in every branch and trunk: wood. There's no mechanism for extending a given length of wood, unless you're Jesus, and even he apparently only reserved that miracle for when Joseph accidentally cut a piece too short. The wood is surrounded by a layer called the "cambium", which is surrounded by the bark and often thought of as a part of the bark by laymen. Bark and wood are both composed of dead cells pushed away from the cambium as the cells in the cambium continue dividing, sort of like how human skin cells continuously divide and push some cells out to form our "dead" outermost dermal layer, except that a cambium does it in both directions, in and out. The cambium is the only living part of a trunk/branch/twig. (And if you're Jesus, you can kill it by yelling at it!) Cambium can make any given section of a trunk or branch thicker by continuing to divide, move out, and leave a new layer of dead cells behind. But, whereas thickening is always possible by adding new rings around the outside of the wood, lengthening isn't because there are no layers stacked in that direction; there's no space to put new material between what's above and what's below.

anthroban wrote:Take, for instance, the poplar... the distance between the first branches and the ground continually increases, this is especially evident in poplars which grow in close proximity to each other.

It looks that way because the lower branches either died and fell off (often years ago when they would have been pretty small) or, in the case of plantations like where your pictures came from, were pruned off. The places where they once were often remain visible on the trunk as a bump, a bump with a depression in it, or a slight angle in the trunk's shape. I'm putting red boxes on your pictures, around some spots where I believe I see the artifacts of past branches on the trees' trunks.

franko wrote:
@sgt kelly:
Ok, I understand, there is a communication, and the branch is a subject. It emits signals and knows how to interpret the received ones.
Right after the signal from another branch, it should interpret the signal from the wall, for example?

@revolutionist:
Ok, you take light as very important, i agree. But I'm also interested in another influences.

@delvo
Ok, so the truck of the tree is an absolute subject. Environmental conditions have influences, but only of their clear form.
(I'm not sure i translated the bold part well )

Should your explanation be understood like this: there is an inner pattern which would, or would not be allowed by environmental conditions?
(it is important for me to determine a subject)

and one more thing:

I have often seen very wild and very "untidy" branches, but I never saw "attempt" of one branch to grow through another one (either of it's own tree, or through a branch of a neighbour tree).
What is a reason for that?

Now, my own question, which consideres franko's last question.
I know delvo already said this:

The buds/twigs with the least exposure to sunlight are usually the most likely ones to die.

... and that would explain why a branch does not attempt to grow through some branch above it;
But what about side branches?

I forgot to say thanx to delvo, he really put effort to explain everything.
Thanx to all the others for their contribution too.

franko wrote:So, let's repeat:

1. the tree is like us, when we look or grope with our hand to get through the door?
2. the tree is forced by a seed, everything is written there, and the world is just supporting it or baffle it?
3. the tree is guided by the whole world, different conditions and energies, which heave it, the seed acts only as a start impuls?

And a little story about a pine tree:
The pine trees send their scions streight up, vertically. So vertically, that it could not be influenced by the sun (sun is never streight up). So vertically, that it really can be compared to candles and in past time it used to be a custom here (i.e. in franko's neighbourhood) to put a candels on a pine tree on Xmas to remind us on pine tree scions. They really do look like candles, they are white and stricktly vertical.
Why are they so stricktly vertical?

Another question from franko:

franko wrote:
Next,

let's take that the branch turns aside because there is a wall in front of it. Who is the subject there?

1. The branch. It "says" :"I cannot go further, there is a wall, to solid to break trough"
2. The wall. It "says": "Where is that branch heading? I have to repel it.

It interests me regarding direction of stream of information, or, let's say, influences.
Is that like physical law? For example - enough steam in the air, enough small temperature : the consequence is rain. So, if there are some conditions, the consequence must follow.
Some conditions near the wall - the branch turns aside.

anthroban wrote:Ah, thank you for explaining that. Much appreciated

add. I don't think you're suggesting the lower branches are always pruned off, are you? Because I've observed the same thing in poplar trees growing wild and untended.

I would note that deer make fine pruning tools as well as great jerky.

anthroban wrote:I don't think you're suggesting the lower branches are always pruned off, are you?

No, I wrote that they die and fall off OR, on plantations like where your pictures came from, get pruned off. Either way, they're detached; they aren't there anymore. (Foresters tend to refer to ANY detachment of branches as "pruning", with distinctions such as "self-pruning" and "human/artificial pruning", so in that sense the answer to your question would be Yes because letting branches die and fall off would then be called the tree's way of pruning itself... but that's not how I was using the word at the time because I knew I wasn't talking to foresters, and in any case I did explicitly include words stating that they tend to naturally die and fall off on their own.)

sanja wrote:Ok, so the truck of the tree is an absolute subject. Environmental conditions have influences, but only of their clear form.
(I'm not sure i translated the bold part well )

I can't answer because I don't understand the question.

sanja wrote:Should your explanation be understood like this: there is an inner pattern which would, or would not be allowed by environmental conditions?

The inner pattern is a set of ways of responding to environmental conditions.

sanja wrote:I have often seen very wild and very "untidy" branches, but I never saw "attempt" of one branch to grow through another one (either of it's own tree, or through a branch of a neighbour tree).
What is a reason for that?

I can't answer because I don't know why anybody would ever think they WOULD do something like that.

sanja wrote:1. the tree is like us, when we look or grope with our hand to get through the door?
2. the tree is forced by a seed, everything is written there, and the world is just supporting it or baffle it?
3. the tree is guided by the whole world, different conditions and energies, which heave it, the seed acts only as a start impuls?

Well, it's definitely not #3. I don't know how to pick between #1 and #2 because I don't know what the difference is.

sanja wrote:The pine trees send their scions streight up, vertically... They really do look like candles, they are white and stricktly vertical.
Why are they so stricktly vertical?

I don't know. But I do know that while the leaves on them are growing, before the inside has hardened into wood, they gradually darken and uncurve to end up more horizontal, thus adding to the branch's length out from the trunk.

sanja wrote:let's take that the branch turns aside because there is a wall in front of it. Who is the subject there?

1. The branch. It "says" :"I cannot go further, there is a wall, to solid to break trough"
2. The wall. It "says": "Where is that branch heading? I have to repel it.

Walls don't do anything, so it clearly can't be #2. But what the branch "decides" isn't that it can't break through the wall but just that it's getting rubbed and bumped too much when the wind blows or isn't getting enough light.

anthroban wrote:I thought about what he wrote afterwards; it's probably due to the lessening light the lower branches receive - as the forest grows thicker the trees must grow taller to receive more light and the lower branches are shaded and die.

Yes. Look at it this way: making and maintaining leaves has costs for the tree, so it's not going to bother making and maintaining leaves that won't return enough benefit. And the ones with the most shade on them yield the least benefit for the same cost.

Ok, now i'm going to multiquote Delvo, so, the answeres under those quotes will be franko's responds.

Delvo wrote:I can't answer because I don't know why anybody would ever think they WOULD do something like that.

because of statistic probability. There are very impervious natural forests (here), and different kind of trees. When I look at them, it seem to me that there is no math which could have calculate that (errrm ... not sure about grammar here ), everything is so good compound (spaced).
(The forests I have in mind are not like your poplar-wood, those mine are boscages (covert? brushwood? i have slightly problems with translation ) , and you cannot pass through them.)

Delvo wrote:
Well, it's definitely not #3. I don't know how to pick between #1 and #2 because I don't know what the difference is.

#2 is like an architetural drawing for a house, which would not be changed if environmental conditions remain predicted ones.
#1 is like an architetural drawing for a house which we will change on the half way of construction, because, for example, now we want different floor. The branch, when it finds itself in some environmant, starts to "feel" it, and it's governed by it.

Delvo wrote:
I don't know. But I do know that while the leaves on them are growing, before the inside has hardened into wood, they gradually darken and uncurve to end up more horizontal, thus adding to the branch's length out from the trunk.

Yes, as it grows, so the branches spread (expand?) , it seems like gravity shapes them, making pretty clear cone - though, the scions are stricktly vertical.

Delvo wrote:
Walls don't do anything, so it clearly can't be #2. But what the branch "decides" isn't that it can't break through the wall but just that it's getting rubbed and bumped too much when the wind blows or isn't getting enough light.

Ok, I understand. I'm secure that the branch "knows" about the wall before it touches it, but that's just my conviction. Only I'm not sure if the branch "knows" it, or the wall "knows" it, or is it something in between.

Just one more thing.

Thank you.

It is pleasure to talk like this.

I'm gouverned by some, let's say half-idea, which would in first case mean #3, and in the other not quite #2, but something like equality of the branch and the wall .
Any way, I like when someone firmly stands on his attitude, even there when things are not so tested. I do the same thing.

I would have some more things, and, of course, I would appreciate every oppinion.

franko says:

More about the same thing, towards differentiation of attitudes.

1. The first thought.
The tree seed is an inscription, a "document" which will, in some conditions, be effective, it will became the source, the cause for both. developmant and existance of the tree. And all environmental conditions, humidity, temperature, light, ingredients in the soil, etc - will affect on that initial impulse. That would completaly define a tree in every moment.

Next thought.
Neither the inscription in the seed, or it's (let's say) genes, or conditions - considered in previously described way (humidity, soil, sun, wind) - are not enough to explain the formation (spacing) of branches.
So, I need some other conditions for better explanation - something that would look like senses, or condition of space.

2. Further - Senses.
Like communication, like some sort of emission, which could be associated with both - temperature and humidity, but which could be detected, as we sometimes say that a tree can feel threatened. And in the same manner, it could feel (sense) objects around itself.

3. For the end,
the condition of space. The condition where will be difficult to determine what is a subject in that space. Where the a priori thing would be interdependency of all of them. And in that situation, seed, wall, humidity, soil, sun ... would be just factors of influence. And the tree would be one existance, completaly bounded with all existance around itslef.
In that way, even the strongest influences would bi just building, because there would be deeper condition, condition of bare existance, which would know or sense or be aware of existance around itself, in the way we do not know for now.

When I imagine waking up the trees in the spring, it seems to me that the most simple explanation would be if I imagine the sky, and the space around trees as somewhat brighter, like - filled with white mist, warmer and brighter, and like that mist is attrackting the plants, feeds them, and there, where is already one branch, "the food" for another branch is not sufficient, so the other one turns aside looking for place for itself.
No, not even turns, it just goes in that direction like the water flows where it's free to go, or down.

One more:

franko wrote:So, for the question "how does the tree space it's branches" I do not know the answer. The question seemed simple, so that astonished me.
But when I ask others, I do not get answers that satisfy me. And in one moment my mind crosses this: what if no one knows that?

If I think about possible explanations, I come to conclusion that the way of thinking that considers a world as a set of objects is what might narrow me. What could help me with solving my problem is that I take the world as much better banded.

But I instantly come to this: science has already done that, it has some world, some collection of things, and forces and energies that move and bound that collection.

Isn't that the same what religion had? One world (of things) and god to move it?

Arent the force and god equally obscure ?

I might have translate "obscure" as "unknown", but I think "obscure" is better translation.

sanja wrote:#2 is like an architetural drawing for a house... #1 is like an architetural drawing for a house...

Then neither of them is a good analogy for tree growth, because there is no plan for a tree's shape at all. What a seed has "planned" at the start is just a set of processes, rules for how to grow. They will result in a shape, but that shape is not drawn up ahead of time. Imagine if I gave you a set of driving directions that just said to turn right, then turn left, then go straight, then turn left, and so on. At the end, if you followed them, you'd be somewhere, but you wouldn't know where you were going until you go there, and I wouldn't even need to know where it is in order to give you the right/left/straight sequence. Another example is frost like this. While the frost is still building up, the laws of physics dictate that some points are more likely to have a water molecule from the air stick to them than other points are, and water molecules in the air are blown onto the object at random, and a complex shape results from that, but there is no destiny that the final shape must be exactly one way and not some other way. Each time the same object gets frost on it, the frost will be in a slightly different shape from the shape the previous frost took.

Again, franko's responds under delvo's text:

Delvo wrote:They will result in a shape, but that shape is not drawn up ahead of time.

But the pine tree will never grow up from an oak's seed. And their branches are, in advance, differently spaced.

Delvo wrote:
While the frost is still building up, the laws of physics dictate that some points are more likely to have a water molecule from the air stick to them than other points are, and water molecules in the air are blown onto the object at random, and a complex shape results from that, but there is no destiny that the final shape must be exactly one way and not some other way. Each time the same object gets frost on it, the frost will be in a slightly different shape from the shape the previous frost took.

That's just an excellent example for what I would like to say, too. Yes, if we observe final result, the branches and the frost can be simmilar.

But, observing emergence (genesis), observing causes for that final condition - thay could be very different.
the question coul be more simple, and reduced to this: is the way in which frost is formed, same as the way the branch is formed.
Do peripheral conditions also build the branch, natural conditions near the branch, sun wind wall humidity. If the answer is yes, which part of shaping take those peripheral conditions. 50%? Or more?

But, the position of one branch in relation to another one - that comes under inner or peripheral conditions? Where it should grow, the direction, is determined from inside of the branch, or is it determined from outside, like someone sucks the branch out? Or the branch sediments, like frost?

Another one:

i have to admit, it looks strange to me when you think that sun influences spacing of the branches. I would never say so.
The trees always look enough symmetrical, although the sun is never on the north.
They always look to me like immersed into air of some particular temperature. And the temperature changes, through the day, and through the year.

And that immediate environmant seem to me like mist, like as it has no privileged direction. And the formation of the branches, one in relation to others, demands some cause, which we probably do not know.

Aaah, what a mistake in a translation.
It's not "they always look" it's "they always seem"

More:

franko wrote:If my thought is heading direction to conclusion that i do not know anything about spacing of the branches, than I start to think about another thing.
How comes that no one can give me simple and clear answer to that? If the question is asked, is it answered, and is the answer :"I do not know"?

It often seem to me that the presumption that we know something is the basis for many ignorances.

And here, before all, I think of believers. They have a system which they do not have to know, cause they always can refer to god, and their presumption is that he knows.

What makes me curious, is this: Science has very simmilar system. It comes to something it does not know, but it does not admits it. And there, it often solves the truth by bringing in new terms, like energy, force, emergency, quantum foam, string ... so, whenever I hear some complicated term I know that it is attempt to justify the expression "I do not know".
But insisting on the power of science is often insisting on the power of milions of people gathered in institutions and supported by people on power, even when they are dealing with suspicious things.

I think that science and religion have one emphatic similarity - they are both activity of affiliated people. And they both live on their communities - scientific community and the church.

What do you say about that?