Il miglior modo di prevedere il futuro è costruirlo
GIORGIO OREFICE @ ALL RIGHT RESERVED 2021
From: FRACTAL CHRONICLES by Giorgio Orefice.
Chapter 1 Conversation between Elara and her mother the shaman Juliana.
Chapter 2 Is there anything that doesn't age?
Conversation between Elara and her mother the shaman Juliana.
Elara, sitting on a bench in the garden looking at a small seed of a large tree :
“Mà,…. where does a tree come from?, what makes its huge mass of wood grow? From what the earth provides him?”
Juliana: Most of the mass of a tree comes from the air. Not from the earth.
In 1600 the Belgian scientist Jean Baptiste van Helmont, took a vase with about 90 kg of earth,
He planted a small willow plant there and for 5 years added only water. Eventually the tree had grown by about 74 kg while the earth had lost only a few grams. So Van Helmont wondered: Where does all that amount of wood come from?
He thought (wrong in part) that it came from the water.
Today we know the correct answer:
The mass of trees comes mainly from: carbon dioxide (CO2) present in the air.
Through photosynthesis :
1.the plant takes CO2 from the air
2. take water from the ground
3.use the energy of the Sun
With this process it builds: cellulose, lignin, sugars, wood.
The carbon atoms that form wood come almost all from the air. (Meer)
In other words: a tree is air solidified by sunlight.
A tree is born from the air and light.
Trees are architectures of air built by light.”
The forest is air that has learned to become wood.”
A concrete example
We take an oak of 1000 kg.
Approximately: 900 kg come from the CO2 of the air while a small part from water and soil minerals. The earth serves above all as a support and source of mineral salts, not as the main material of wood.
The structure of the tree is one of the purest fractal forms of nature:
The same pattern is repeated at each scale.
So the tree is simultaneously:
Elara: But then why without the nourishing elements, without water, with the earth alone the plants, the trees, die?
Juliana: Your question is very right and it is true that most of the mass of the tree comes from the air, but the tree cannot live only on air. Let's see why.
The mass comes from the air (carbon)
With photosynthesis the plant uses the CO2 of the atmosphere. This process uses:
carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air
water (H2O) from the ground
energy of the sun
The result is glucose, the base molecule from which the plant builds:
wood, cellulose, leaves, roots.
So the carbon of the wood comes mainly from the air.
Without water the plant dies because:
is one of the reagents of photosynthesis: it transports nutrients into the trunk and maintains the internal pressure of cells (turgor).
If the water is missing: photosynthesis freezes: the tissues collapse, the plant dries.
The earth provides elements that the air cannot give:
They are few in mass (less than 5%), but without them the chemistry of life does not work.
It's like building a house:
The bricks are the carbon of the air but you need screws, concrete and systems to make it stand.
The soil is therefore used for three fundamental things:
tree , water reserve, mineral supply
Ma la materia principale del legno continua a venire dall’atmosfera.
l’atmosfera → diventa albero
gli alberi → diventano foreste
le foreste → regolano di nuovo l’atmosfera.
Si esegue un ciclo ripetitivo, frattale.
Elara: Is it true that trees grow almost exclusively... at night?
Juliana: Si ed è una delle cose più affascinanti della fisiologia delle piante, e spesso sorprende: gran parte della crescita strutturale degli alberi avviene di notte. Non significa che di giorno non succeda nulla, ma che la costruzione vera dei tessuti avviene soprattutto quando il sole è già tramontato. Vediamo perché:
Di giorno: la pianta “produce materia”
During the day the leaves make photosynthesis.
Sunlight allows the plant to transform CO2 and water into sugars.
In practice: the leaves manufacture sugars and
These sugars are accumulated or transported to the plant.
But while with the sun also happens another thing: the trees lose a lot of water through the leaves (perspiration).
This creates a kind of hydraulic tension in the trunk.
When the night arrives, the plant builds
Transpiration decreases a lot, the tree rehydrates, the internal pressure of the cells increases.
At this point the plant can:
Many studies with laser sensors on the trunks show just that:
The trees contract during the day and expand at night.
The sun writes the energy at night builds the form.
The forest is an architecture built slowly in the silence of the night
as a result of a fractal procedure, i.e. as a result of fractal repetitions
commanded by the algorithm that produced it and the DNA that regulates its optimal development.
Trees are among the most perfectly fractal objects of nature,
Even their roots follow very precise mathematical laws and when scientists measure them they find fractal dimensions very close to those of complex natural systems.
The tree as fractal geometry
A fractal is a structure in which the same shape is repeated at different scales.
In the trees, exactly this happens:
This type of structure has very special properties.
Scientists study trees with a mathematical concept called the fractal dimension.
A line has dimension 1
a plan has dimension 22.
Natural structures are between the two.
Tree canopies often have values between: 1.5 – 1.8
They are not lines and
They are not full surfaces
They are extremely efficient intermediate forms.
The roots are also fractal
This underground network is often called: Wood Wide Web
because mycorrhizal mushrooms connect different trees and through this net can pass:
The forest as a fractal organism
When you look at a forest with this perspective something surprising happens.
You can't see any more isolated trees. You see a multilevel fractal system :
Each level repeats a connection logic.
Because Nature does not build isolated objects. It builds patterns that repeat themselves.
If you combine everything we've seen:
In other words:
A tree is light and air that they have learned to organize.