Tree is a ...

Heather, Interesting metaphor with the tree. I'm going to be too critical now only because I am UBER aware of trees at this moment. My cousin lost 17 trees on Saturday this week to the Storm with hurricane winds that reeked havoc across Long Island, and NJ. Two of the trees were a 100 feet tall, 5 Cypress were 40 feet tall, 3 Pines were 30 feet tall, and the other 7 were 60 foot Gum Trees. I'm 27 years old, and my cousin's 45 years old. The trees at his house took between 2-4 generations to grow, that's 60-100 years, and they were rotated 90* to a horizontal sleep while they were uprooted in one night. Heather you said the trees were stretching out from the trunk, but the tree,and plants for that matter, grow from the apical bud. I'm simply saying that Rationally each part of the tree (Made up of all its cells) serves a purpose in seeing the cellular growth, all the way to the organ growth of the plant as virtuously egalitarian as possible. And just to entertain to you with one more piece of info. A Plant's form of IPM (Integrated Pest Management) Is disputably the most sophisticated defense mechanism on the planet. The one method I'm referring to is "Compartmentalization" This is a biochemical hormonal process of problem thinking. When something attacks a plant the plant defends itself. For example, say a car drives into an oak tree: The second the car impacts the tree the cells in the tree calculate precisely where the impact was, how much damage has been done to it's bark, it phloem,xylem. The bark is the organ that is the main life of defense to invading pests (Japanese long Horn Beetles for i.e.), also The Phloem and The Xylem in a tree/plant are the vascular tissue which provides nourishment from the root (Water entering the roots through the imbibing system) up the phloem and across the xylem through the branches and eventually the developing buds. So Heather once this is compromised without the compartmentalization system the tree has no chance at nourishing itself, or even defending against pests. The tree has this skill of compartmentalization to determine where it's going to internally fuse cells to form a bark about 30% inside, close to the middle of the tree, and this shuts down everything outside of this new bark created through stimulated chemicals. The tree now is going to sustain itself by living through the vascular tissue inside outside the compartment it created, and compensate its networks of xylem and phloem intensely around the compartmentalized area of the tree. Ultimately on the outside it may look like nothing ever happend depending on the attack which confronted the tree. With all of this sophisticated critical thinking skills, that whether you believe it or not, Trees do have, The trees lying on my uncles yard, and driveway are still alive nine days later. If something was strong/graceful enough to simply place them vertically in the earth again, they would go on living according to their individual needs, and objectives.