Title. I’ve never seen a tree where two or more branches have collided while growing. How does the tree “know” where all the branches are while growing?
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It doesn’t know as much as follows the light. If you look at old growth, especially tighter, you’ll see a lot of small, or leafless branches and parts thereof, as they fail to absorb sunlight. Basically the tree needs Sun, so it won’t grow in too shady spots. You could plant two trees next to each other, intermingle their branches and in short order, you’d notice these branches would be less full, less growth and turn into essentially just sticks.
It’s not an intelligent, “Oops, it’s dark here,” as much as the underperforming leaves just die.
Growth is in response to stimuli and available resources, when one branch interrupts the stimuli of another branch, or uses the same resources better, the other branch adapts and grows toward the next strongest stimuli/uses the resources it has.
Growth is also following an evolutionary pattern in the DNA that is constantly adapting but those changes happen generationally so they are hard to observe as a common person. On top of the fact that a lot of trees that people interact with, especially in urban areas and farms, are essentially clones.
plants arent exactly “dumb”; they can sense and interact with their environment. A tree grows its branches slowly and can likely see/sense extremely close objects by electromagnetic interference or chemical scenting (seen in root structures).
the smell of fresh grass?? thats actually each blade of grass releasing chemicals to warn all the other grass….and other plants have been recorded giving off scents and discharges and rarely sounds to “communicate” with surrounding plants.
The tips of plants put out a chemical that prevents buds on the side of the plant from growing out. Eventually there is enough distance between the tip and the bud on the side that the hormone doesn’t prevent the side buds from growing out, in this way you get somewhat regular spacing at the buds
Not sure what you mean by “colliding”, but tree branches often grow “close” to each other, or overlap each other. Pruning one of them out will improve the health of the tree.
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