Forest and Nature

By Liliana Usvat
Blog 269-365

In western culture since the Industrial Revolution ( After 1790) the idea grew that there was little connection between the objects in the wold and the individual. Before that time man did believe that he could affect matter and the environment through his thoughts. With the Industrial Revolution however even the elements of nature lost their living quality in man's eye. See the destruction of the forest for example. They became objects to be categorized named torn apart examined.

In his great curiosity to understand the heredity of a flower, say he forgot  what he could learn by smelling a flower looking at ti watching it be itself.

You cannot understand what makes things live when you rob them of life. So he examined dead nature. Often he had to kill life in order to he thought  to discover its reality.

Man's thoughts no longer seemed to have any effect upon nature because his mind he saw himself apart from it. He became blind to the connection between his thoughts and his physical environment and experience.

Nature became then an adversary that he must control.  Yet underneath he felt that he was at the mercy of  nature, because in cutting himself off from it he also cut himself off from using many of his own abilities.

Very natural functions of the conscious mind therefore were assigned to the underground  and cut off from the normal use.

If the purpose of civilization is to enable the individual to live in peace joy security and abundance, then that ideea of disconnection with nature has served him poorly.

Forest Lessons form the Easter Island

By Liliana Usvat
Blog 268 -365

Most everyone is familiar with the enigmatic stone heads of Easter Island, the massive carved rocks that sit on stone platforms on the coast and lie scattered across the landscape.

The heads, called moai, and a small native population are virtually all that is left of the Polynesian civilization that once flourished on the island. The once-lush forests that covered the 63-square-mile island, known to its inhabitants as Rapa Nui, have all been lost and the fertile soil that once supported a vital farming community has been blown away by tradewinds.

A chilling story of resource exploitation and destruction on Easter Island is beginning to come to light. The first westerners to discover the island wondered how any one could have survived on such a desolate, treeless place. Indeed, this was a mystery until recent core samples taken from the crater lakes showed that the island was heavily forested with a giant now-extinct palm while the Easter Island culture was active.

Easter Island is the prototypical example illustrating the serious consequences of the overexploitation of natural resources by man. According to this thesis, the deforestation of the island, noted by the first explorers, was due to the negligence of the Pascuenses themselves. This latter group, applying no forethought, were said to have cut down all the trees essential to their survival for domestic purposes or even more foolishly, for constructing, transporting and setting up their famous Moai. The disappearance of the trees thus ineluctably led to the decline of their civilization and the near disappearance of the Pascuenses.

When Easter Island was "discovered" by Europeans in 1722, it was a barren landscape with no trees over ten feet in height. The small number of inhabitants, around 2000, lived in a state of civil disorder and were thin and emaciated. Virtually no animals besides rats inhabited the island and the natives lacked sea-worthy boats.

The Easter Island of ancient times supported a sub-tropical forest complete with the tall Easter Island Palm, a tree suitable for building homes, canoes, and latticing necessary for the construction of such statues. With the vegetation of the island, natives had fuelwood and the resources to make rope. With their sea-worthy canoes, Easter Islanders lived off a steady diet of porpoise. A complex social structure developed complete with a centralized government and religious priests. 




It was this Easter Island society that built the famous statues and hauled them around the island using wooden platforms and rope constructed from the forest. The construction of these statues peaked from 1200 to 1500 AD, probably when the civilization was at its greatest level. However, pollen analysis shows that at this time the tree population of the island was rapidly declining as deforestation took its toll.

 A spooky cave (right) at the southwest corner of the island, Ana Kai Tangata, is translated to "cave where men are eaten." Inside are pictographs painted in ochre and white of ghost like birds flying upwards. With no wood left to build boats, all the Rapa Nui people could do was look enviously at the birds that sail effortless through the sky. The Rapa Nui culture and community, which had developed over the past 300 years, collapsed.

Around 1400 the Easter Island palm became extinct due to overharvesting. Its capability to reproduce has become severely limited by the proliferation of rats, introduced by the islanders when they first arrived, which ate its seeds. In the years after the disappearance of the palm, ancient garbage piles reveal that porpoise bones declined sharply. 

The islanders, no longer with the palm wood needed for canoe building, could no longer make journeys out to sea. Consequently, the consumption of land birds, migratory birds, and mollusks increased. Soon land birds went extinct and migratory bird numbers were severely reduced, thus spelling an end for Easter Island's forests. Already under intense pressure by the human population for firewood and building material, the forests lost their animal pollinators and seed dispersers with the disappearance of the birds. Today, only one of the original 22 species of seabird still nests on Easter Island.

With the loss of their forest, the quality of life for Islanders plummeted. Streams and drinking water supplies dried up. Crop yields declined as wind, rain, and sunlight eroded topsoils. Fires became a luxury since no wood could be found on the island, and grasses had to be used for fuel. No longer could rope by manufactured to move the stone statues and they were abandoned. The Easter Islanders began to starve, lacking their access to porpoise meat and having depleted the island of birds. As life worsened, the orderly society disappeared and chaos and disarray prevailed.

Links
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYliCfzOkDE

Japanese Pagoda Tree, Sophora japonica Nitrogen Fixing Trees, Medicinal Uses

By Liliana Usvat
Blog 267 -365

This tree is native to eastern Asia, especially China and Japan. Others common names include Chinese pagoda tree, Styphnolobium japonicum, Japanese pagoda tree, and Chinese Scholar.

Chinese Scholar Tree or Japanese Pagoda Tree A native of China, this medium sized tree grows to 65 feet in height, usually with a broad round crown.  It has a rapid growth rate and tolerates city conditions, heat, and drought. When grown in a yard, the Japanese Pagoda Tree can reach a height ranging from 50 to 75 feet; however, when grown along the road in compact soil, it only grows to 30 or 40 feet. Sophora has a height and spread of from 40 to 60 feet. It is hardy in zones 4 to 8  and prefers an open, sunny location.  

Bloom This tree begins to bloom when 10 to 15 years old. In late summer and early fall, 10- to15-inch upright panicles of mildly fragrant, creamy-white, pea-like flowers are produced at the ends of branches and live about a month.

Seeds Flowers are replaced by ornamental yellow seed pods, 6 to 8 inches long, which persist well into the winter and resemble strings of beads.

Bark The young bark is pale gray, becoming furrowed into fibrous, interlaced, scaly ridges.

Medicinal Uses

Sophora japonica, also known as Huai Hua Mi, is edible and often used as a cool Chinese herb to stop bleeding. 

Fruits as a source of sophorose and rutin drugs.

Main chemical constituents are triterpenoids, flavonoids, betulin, sophoradiol, flower oil, and tannin. Triterpenoids mainly include azukisaponinⅠ, Ⅱ, Ⅴ, soyasaponin I, Ⅲ, and kaikasaponin Ⅰ, Ⅱ, Ⅲ. Flavonoids mainly include quercetin, rutin, isorhamnetin, isorhamnetin-3-rutinoside, and kaempferol-3-rutinoside. And flower oil contains fatty acids, such as lauric acid, dodecenoic acid, tetradecenoic acid, teradecadienoic acid, palmitic acid, hexadecenoic acid, stearic acid, octadecadienoic acid, octadecatrienoic acid, arachidic acid and β-sitosterol.

The  fruit is expert in stopping bleeding and lowering blood pressure; root bark and leaf are skilled in curing sore. In addition, its shoots and seedling are also used medicinally. According to Ben Cao Gang Mu (Compendium of Materia Medica), its newborn shoots and seedling can be consumed as vegetable or tea. And Bao Pu Zi, literally “Book of the Master Who Embraces Simplicity”, and Ming Yi Bie Lu (Appendant Records of Famous Physicians) say that this herb is one of the best brain tonics, which can improve hair color and live longer if only people take it earlier.

Yu Huai Zang Lian Wan. From Cheng Fang Bian Du (Convenient Reader of Established Formulas), this formula is basically formulated for chronic and new hemorrhoids. Other key herbal ingredients are Huang Lian (Coptis Rhizome), Di Yu (Sanguisorba Root), and so on.

2. Huai Hua San. From Jing Yan Liang Fang (Experiential Fine Formulas), this prescription combines it with Zhi Zi (Gardenia) for the treatment of blood-heat type of hemafecia.

3. Huai Hua San. From Liang Peng Hui Ji (Close Friends’ Collection), this recipe uses this herb with Bai Cao Shuang (Plant Soot) to cure vaginal bleeding.

4. Huai Xiang San. From Sheng Ji Zong Lu (Complete Record of Holy Benevolence), it couples charred Huai Hua Mi with a little bit She Xiang (Moschus) to treat throwing up blood.

5. Huai Hua Jin Yin Hua Jiu. In the formula of Yi Xue Qi Meng (Enlighten of Medicine), this herb works with Jin Yin Hua (Honeysuckle Flower) and wine to cure sore and ulcer.

Reforestation

 It has long been planted as shade tree thanks to its rapid growth rate and an immense size.