Power of Green

Dartington Hall, Devon

There is a scene in The Scent of the Night by Andrew Camilleri, where Inspector Montalbano goes to the site of a beloved Saracen olive tree in order to wait out his drunkenness.  To his horror, the tree has been felled to make way for a tasteless new house.  Enraged, he starts to vandalise what has been built, including breaking six windows and writing obscenities on the walls.  That a police inspector, albeit a fictional one, can be driven to such extremes illustrates very well the power plants and trees can have over us.   

One may be forgiven for first thinking, by the title of this post, it’s simply about environmental politics.  In a way, it is, but only in that it is concerning direct influence from the environment itself; more specifically, that of plants.  A number of things have driven my thoughts in that direction, and I’m certainly not the first person to have considered this unusual perspective.

Michael Pollan, for instance, wrote a popular book on this subject, The Botany of Desire back in 2001.  Essentially the question Pollan is asking is, ‘When I plant a potato, is it because I want to, or because the potato wants me to?’  The book has four chapters, exploring four human desires and how specific plants can exploit those desires, encouraging us to plant them so they can therefore reproduce.  Those four plants and their corresponding desires are:  the apple, sweetness; the tulip, beauty; marijuana, intoxication; and the potato, control.  It’s a fascinating book, well-researched and insightful about humanity and history.  The only problem I had with it is that, because he tended to throw himself into the research wholeheartedly – behaviour that is mostly commendable – when he was researching marijuana, he was clearly so stoned that he tended to waffle on and on needlessly, as stoned people are wont to do.  The editor should have been more ruthless regarding that chapter.

It was something along those veins (no pun intended) that got me thinking about the book in recent months, when I realised that a large majority of people who had lectured me endlessly about conspiracies, especially during the pandemic, had one thing in common: cannabis.  They didn’t necessarily smoke it, though some did.  They may have absorbed it in other ways, perhaps for health reasons, or even merely lived with people who did.  Or, whilst they may not have been using it or around it at the time, they did in the past smoke it excessively.  I don’t know if this is a coincidence, or what research has been done regarding the brain chemistry of users, but I do notice a tendency to exaggerate connections, often resulting in paranoia.  I remember how as a teacher at a boarding school, every time I saw one particular teenager, I would say to him teasingly, ‘We know.’  I have no idea why I did that, it was something about his withdrawn behaviour, or a guilty look perhaps, but he seemed quite ordinary to me, certainly not like a stereotypical stoner.  It turned out he was secretly smoking a formidable amount every day, as I discovered years later.  Apparently every time I said those words to him, he would panic and run away to hide under his bed.  He needn’t have bothered, as I didn’t have a clue what we knew.

So there is a shadow side to many of our relationships with plants.  As another example, Pollan outlines extensively how the Dutch economy almost collapsed because of tulip mania, resulting in financial ruin for many individuals.  As with any interesting relationships, ours with plants can be varied, complex and profound, with darker aspects when we lose sight of ourselves.  The chapter on the potato and control certainly goes into some unpleasant aspects of humanity.   

The other thing that struck me in the past year was the very direct power trees in particular can have over us.  It may seem the power is on the other side, the way humans gleefully destroy entire rainforests, but that is not true power, anymore than it is with the bully who picks on the kid who is physically weaker than him; it is control, demonstrating a profound inner weakness.  The outcry over the felling of the Sycamore Gap Tree in Northumberland in the UK three years ago, shows just how much power that one tree had over the world.  Similarly, Sheffield Council had to set up an Independent Tree Panel due to disgust over its felling programme, and Plymouth Council met national outrage when it furtively cut down over a hundred trees in the middle of the night, causing political upheaval.  Plymouth’s disastrous clandestine operation cost over three million pounds and its actions are still being felt today, with the city in constant chaos due to ceaseless ‘renovation’, including considerable replanting.  It seems that in both cases, the trees may have won.  And as far as the Sycamore Gap Tree is concerned, things look more than hopeful, with new growth emerging from the stump.

In the documentary Life After People, a world is explored where humanity has disappeared overnight.  I found it interesting how skyscrapers would quickly become havens for cats, as vines, unchecked, grow up and down the sides of buildings, allowing access to all levels for the felines.  It was particularly heartening to see how the oceans would recover from our damaging influence and start teeming with life almost immediately.  

Thus it was, one spring day in Cornwall I once again felt the lack of trees and greenery around the fishing village where I lived.  I was experiencing something like a desperate thirst to be under the lush canopies I knew existed just over the border in the next county, as well as in much of England.  I decided to go for a swim at the edge of the village.  I put on my mask and wetsuit as the water was still icy cold from the winter months, and descended – into a luscious landscape of green abundance.  I was swimming through an underwater forest of seaweed of all types, fish and jellyfish cruising gently amidst it all. 

This was where the green was.  It had never really gone away.   

...transcending these,

Far other Worlds, and other Seas;

Annihilating all that’s made

To a green Thought in a green Shade.

The Garden, Andrew Marvell