I would assume the fallen tree would have enough nutrients to sustain itself for a while and would eventually start dying. Most living things are dying until they’re dead but what exactly is the threshold from dying to dead for a suddenly severed tree?
In: Biology
Most people like to call a tree ‘dead’ as soon as it’s cut down,
Although,
After a tree is cut down, it starts dying immediately due to severed nutrient and water supplies. The visible transition from “dying” to “dead” includes initial signs of wilting and drying, followed by decay, structural weakening, and complete inactivity. There’s no exact moment but rather a gradual progression marked by observable changes in the tree’s condition.
Here is the thing about nature: it has a stubborn refusal to obey or adhere to these nice, neat, discrete little categories some evolved apes have invented for it.
“Living” and “dead” are human conceptions. Nature does not obey them and refuses to divide things into those categories.
Are you alive? Sure you might say. But that’s not entirely true. There are non-trivial parts of you that *aren’t* living. For example, much of your hair is “dead.” Much of your fingernails and toenails are “dead.”
Conversely, when you are “dead” much of you is still alive. If you have a heart attack and dead, all the cells in your body don’t just suddenly and immediately stop. Many of your cells will carry on “living” for several days.
The point at which we consider a person “dead” is a somewhat arbitrary one. It’s a label we invent for our own practical purposes that covers a wide variety of cases but does not, and cannot, neatly divide the universe into two categories with no fuzzy boundaries.
And all of this applies to trees. Much of a “living” tree is composed of not “living” cells. You may have heard it said that only the outer layers of the tree are alive and this is true. And just like many of your cells continue living even if you are “dead” you are correct that much of the tree’s cells will continue to live even if it is chopped down.
So when is a tree considered dead? Well, the perhaps unsatisfying answer is: “we consider it dead when it is useful for us to do so.”
Healthy? The root system is still going strong so after a period (1-3 human seasons) of shock and dormancy, new shoots will come up. This could repeat for generations.
The stump might still be alive. I’ve chopped down a tree and a year later a sapling is growing out of the stump.
I’d highly recommend listening to The Infinite Monkey Cage podcasts.
One of their early episodes raised the question of when a strawberry is dead or alive.
I don’t believe they ever got to a conclusive answer, despite it being brought up constantly in subsequent episodes. It is a fascinating discussion though.
I have a hedge around my yard, which appears to be an advantageous place for maple and beech saplings to sprout.
These appear to be fully un-killable Highlander trees. Every spring, I will cut them as close to the ground as I can manage… and by fall, they’ll have 3-5 feet of new growth. I can’t reasonably dig them out as that would disrupt the plants that are supposed to be there.
I consider these to be dead when they stop producing new growth.
I’ve pushed over trees and found that one root has been keeping it on life support. Ild say when it’s chopped from the roots making it unable to take up nutrition.
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