David E Bratt MD

Trees are the longest-liv­ing or­gan­isms on the plan­et and one of earth's great­est nat­ur­al re­sources.They keep the air clean, re­duce noise pol­lu­tion, im­prove wa­ter qual­i­ty, help pre­vent ero­sion, pro­vide food and build­ing ma­te­ri­als, cre­ate shade, and help make the land­scapes look beau­ti­ful.Prop­er­ly placed around build­ings they can re­duce air-con­di­tion­ing needs by 30 per cent.

A ma­ture tree re­moves al­most 70 times more pol­lu­tion than a new­ly plant­ed tree. A sin­gle tree pro­duces ap­prox­i­mate­ly 260 pounds of oxy­gen per year.That means two ma­ture trees can sup­ply enough oxy­gen an­nu­al­ly to sup­port a fam­i­ly of four. One tree can ab­sorb as much car­bon in a year as a car pro­duces while dri­ving 26,000 miles. Over the course of its life, a sin­gle tree can ab­sorb one ton of car­bon diox­ide.Trees do won­ders for our health, just by be­ing there.

Hu­mans prob­a­bly are de­scen­dants of an­i­mals that lived and de­vel­oped in the trees of the great pri­mae­val forests. Does this ac­count for the feel­ing of com­plete­ness and se­cu­ri­ty that one at­tains sit­ting in the high­est boughs of a tree as a child? Trees point the way to heav­en. They were once thought of as be­ing an­ten­nae for di­vine en­er­gies.

Any­one who has vis­it­ed one of the Red­wood Na­tion­al and State Parks in north­ern Cal­i­for­nia will un­der­stand this. There is a per­sis­tent idea in mythol­o­gy all over the world that trees are re­lat­ed to the heav­ens and are a sym­bol of good­ness. In Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, the Ents, a race of be­ings who close­ly re­sem­ble trees, be­come an­gry at the ma­gi­cian Saru­man, whose armies are cut­ting down large num­bers of trees, march on Saru­man's fortress at Isen­gard and de­stroy it.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers