PLANTED A LONG-BEAKED WILLOW TREE TODAY, JOYFUL : 3/4: The Man Who Planted Trees: A Story of Lost Groves, the Science of Trees, and a Plan to Save the Planet, by Jim Robbins. https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Planted-Trees-Science/dp/0812981294/ref=tmm_pap

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John Batchelor

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🗓️ 2 June 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

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Summary

PLANTED A LONG-BEAKED WILLOW TREE TODAY, JOYFUL : 3/4: The Man Who Planted Trees: A Story of Lost Groves, the Science of Trees, and a Plan to Save the Planet, by Jim Robbins.

https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Planted-Trees-Science/dp/0812981294/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Twenty years ago, David Milarch, a northern Michigan nurseryman with a penchant for hard living, had a vision: angels came to tell him that the Earth was in trouble. Its trees were dying and, without them, human life was in jeopardy. The solution, they told him, was to clone the champion trees of the world—the largest, the hardiest, the ones that had survived millennia and were most resilient to climate change—and create a kind of Noah’s ark of tree genetics. Without knowing if the message had any basis in science, or why he’d been chosen for this task, Milarch began his mission of cloning the world’s great trees. Many scientists and tree experts told him it couldn’t be done, but, twenty years later, his team has successfully cloned some of the world’s oldest trees—among them giant redwoods and sequoias. They have also grown seedlings from the oldest tree in the world, the bristlecone pine Methuselah.

When the New York Times journalist Jim Robbins came upon Milarch’s story, he was fascinated but had his doubts. Yet, over several years, listening to Milarch and talking to scientists, he came to realize that there is so much we do not yet know about trees: how they die, how they communicate, the myriad crucial ways they filter water and air and otherwise support life on Earth. It became clear that as the planet changes, trees and forest are essential to assuring its survival.
1890 HEART OF THE ANDES

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0:00.0	This is CBSI in the world.
0:05.0	I'm John Batson with Jim Robbins, the New York Times correspondent, the author of The Man Who Planted Trees,
0:10.0	A Story of Lost Groves, The Science of Trees, and a Plan to Save the Planet.
0:15.0	Published 10 years ago before global attention to climate change, The book is never more relevant and informs
0:24.5	the way to go forward, which is to guide you to a website, Archangel Ancient Tree Archive,
0:32.0	Champion Trees of the Answer is the subtitle, and a man named David Milarark and his colleagues, his son and his family,
0:39.4	who are the next step is to be able to sustain the trees that are big and threatened,
0:47.9	especially the large trees, and also to plant them again so that they can repopulate the landscape. Why? And the reason is
0:58.2	because we live in river valleys. That's the strength of our country. I live in the Hussetonic River
1:05.0	Valley of Western Connecticut. It's a joy. The trees who live here are happy because they're
1:10.5	well watered. Jim writes of the ecosystems such as It's a joy. The trees who live here are happy because they're well-waters.
1:12.4	Jim writes of the ecosystems such as the Chesapeake River Valley,
1:17.3	the one that is important to our nation's capital and to the foundation of the country.
1:23.7	What was it, Jim, and what is it today, and can it be renovated?
1:29.6	Well, actually, yes, it can be renovated.
1:32.0	I mean, again, I've called trees an eco-technology.
1:36.1	And once trees are planted, they can stop things like runoff.
1:41.5	They can stop groundwater pollution. They can take up and neutralize
1:46.7	pollutants, including things from, you know, fossil fuel pollution or pollution from dry cleaning
1:57.0	facilities. I mean, serious toxic waste, they can phyto-remediate, it's called. They can take it up
2:03.0	and neutralize it. And it's being used. This process is being used in a lot of places to, to
2:08.9	heal the land. And I think that they're one of the most important allies we have in this era that we're in
	...

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