Harriet Rix > Quotes

“Above the ground, trees are rainmakers, growing tall to interrupt air flow with their leaves and trunks and branches, emitting volatile organic compounds like scents and alcohols to seed clouds, and releasing water vapor out of their stomata to cycle a gentle, consistent flow of moisture from the air. Below ground, their roots collect and redistribute water, ushering water down to the water table, lowering or raising the level of the water table to ensure they have just the right amount for their roots to be on stable ground.”
― Harriet Rix, The Genius of Trees: How They Mastered the Elements and Shaped the World

“They had adapted and shaped the humans”
― Harriet Rix, The Genius of Trees: How They Mastered the Elements and Shaped the World

“Have you ever wondered why bay leaves smell so fragrant and spicy? Why monkey-puzzle bark smells of cucumber? Why a cedarwood coffer smells warm and soft? Scientists can provide names—polyphenols”
― Harriet Rix, The Genius of Trees: How They Mastered the Elements and Shaped the World

“By the Carboniferous period 300 million years ago”
― Harriet Rix, The Genius of Trees: How They Mastered the Elements and Shaped the World

“Trees are not anthromorphized by animist societies, as they sadly are by so many people who have grown up not looking at them. They know that our nervous systems are not the same and acknowledge that trees's abilities are of far more importance to the environment than ours.”
― Harriet Rix, The Genius of Trees: How They Mastered the Elements and Shaped the World

“The angiosperms include the oaks and the ash, the Parrotia and the baobab, the eucalyptus and the laurels, the palm trees and the rhododendrons. The angio-, or container part of their name, denotes the fact that they have a carpel: a fleshy, adapted leaf that folds around the ovaries, meaning that pollen has to penetrate through some of the plant before it can produce seed. This was an extraordinarily powerful mechanism, because it gave the female plant—which here simply means the plant that will produce seeds and is therefore investing most nutrients in the potential offspring—the power of selection, a dogma-defying ability to determine its offspring’s DNA and therefore influence evolution.”
― Harriet Rix, The Genius of Trees: How They Mastered the Elements and Shaped the World