On trees, the Greens don’t go far enough

Let’s plant trees in their billions in the hope of saving the biodiversity only trees can protect, writes Phillip Adams. Picture: istock

“I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree” quoth arboreal enthusiast Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918). And Joyce was just warming up. The poem went on to talk of said tree “that looks at God all day, and lifts her leafy arms to pray”.

Warren Buffet is another fan: “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” Moved Warren, seconded Ralph, as in Waldo Emerson. “The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.” And Thoreau tells how he “took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees”.

I’m particularly fond of the story that casts von Bismarck as a pioneer tree-hugger. Apparently Otto would leave a claustrophobic meeting to embrace an oak or elm, finding this spiritually nourishing. Spike Milligan would take this manly embrace one stage further by singing “I talk to the trees – that’s why they put me away”.

I too raise my non-leafy arms to pray – for trees. A friend sent me a photograph of the tiny farm where my grandparents raised me. And there it stood, by the rickety front gate: the tree that was my best friend in early childhood. Nothing grand, just a gnarled, scruffy, middle-sized peppercorn that I loved to climb, finding comfort in its leafy arms. Even though I once fell out of it and, 80 years later, still have a scar to prove it.

I’d sit up there looking down on a world where horsepower still meant horses. Grandpa’s draughthorse Blossom pulled his plough, and horses delivered bread, milk, ice and, in winter, firewood. I’d watch the comings-and-goings plus observe the toings-and-froings of Number 48 trams.

I really loved my old tree. Even if its bark was rougher than sandpaper it was gentle and seemed to return my affection. Long gone of course – as is the farm itself. (A few years later it was divvied up into housing blocks, the houses themselves now in their dotage.) But if you’re in tune with trees yourself – and in the vicinity of what was 798 High Street East Kew – you might sense its ghostly presence.

Other trees became friends in later years – I’m still on good terms with a few at my farm today. Those, that is, that survived the cataclysmic hurricane that ring-barked and uprooted a thousand – and, far worse, the last great drought. Thousands didn’t make it, and their uplifted arms are bare and skeletal.

We should pray for trees – for the loss of arboreal lives in drought, bushfires, land-clearing and climate change. And follow Buffet’s advice and invest in them. According to one Nelson Henderson, “the true point of life is to plants trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit”. As Martin Luther said, “every green tree is more glorious than if it were made of gold or silver”.

So let’s plant trees in their billions in the hope of saving the biodiversity only trees can protect – and so counter the maniacs like Brazil’s tree butcher, former president Bolsonaro. And give three cheers for photosynthesis.

The Greens don’t go far enough. Hence my efforts to organise trees into a political party – without branch stacking. Join me in urging Tanya Plibersek to get them the vote.

Trees are the oldest living creatures on earth. He (or she) who plants one plants hope.