I read the Gaia Gardening article, “Tapping into how trees adapt to the cold,” with interest, but also with disgust.
There was certainly worthwhile, solid information given on how trees cope with cold weather. However, unfortunately, the writer quoted and supported an animated video, a fictitious, propaganda story, which stated that tropical trees have evolved over 250 million years (a nice round figure to plant in one’s mind) to become cold climate trees.
This presumes and preaches that very advanced plant life has been around for hundreds of millions of years.
It further conjectures that sophisticated tropical trees gradually adapted to harsher, colder climates. Why? The tropical species is already adapted to its environment and needs the warm climate. According to this bizarre scenario, it took millions of years to learn how to make biological anti-freeze. Pity those poor trees that didn’t have any anti-freeze when an Arctic outbreak hit.
Apparently smarter trees (a bigger brain?), drought-resistant ones, solved this dilemma accidentally somehow?
But poor lettuce and spinach are not as smart or lucky, and cannot survive cold weather. I hadn’t realized that trees were so smart or adaptable. They will have to figure out some way to thwart a chainsaw. I guess the saying, “as dumb as a stump,” is wrong.
Anyway, this whole evolutionary mindset, of it taking millions of years to slowly develop advanced life forms is ridiculous and false. Such evolutionary beliefs pose many questions and unsolvable problems.
Where did the parent tropical trees come from? How did male and female reproductive seeds transmit this ability? How do you know what the climate was 250 million years ago, or since then? Etc.
Trees are programmed for particular environments, those best suited to them. Variation in species is restricted, and has definite boundaries. Adaptation is governed by genetic laws. Try growing fruit trees in cold climates. It must really dismay orchardists, nursery personnel, and forestry workers to learn that it takes millions of years to change or modify a species.
So much for seed selection, grafting, genetic engineering, all unnatural, outside changes to the natural genetic code.
The whole evolutionary, long age development scenario is a farce, a myth, the great new-age fairy-tale.
What is so sad about this evolutionary concept is that many people actually believe this drivel.
David Riley
