The Consciousness of Trees

Jung say in the prologue to Memories, Dreams, Reflections, “Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on a rhizome.”

The rhizome, the rootstock, grows horizontally underground, with roots at its lower end, shoots at its upper. Then Jung continues his comparison of the rhizome with life,

The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes.

Watch and listen to Professor Suzanne Simard, a forester, who shows that all trees in a forest ecosystem are interconnected, with the largest, oldest, "mother trees" serving as hubs. Watch here