The street, the English Bay dusk, the tree on the building…
When I saw it, I instantly thought of a passage that’s deep in Richard Dawkins’ book The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution:
Tall trees that are not in a forest are out of place… It as a complete waste of effort to grow tall if you are the only tree around. It’s much better to spread out sideways like grasses because that way you trap more photons per unit of effort put into growing.
If tall trees that are not in a forest are out of place, imagine how far out of place a tree on a tall building must be.
But you see isolated trees growing in nature. They grow on rocky crags, part of the erosion process. If humans disappeared, our buildings would become those rocky crags.
^ Apparently those trees are stupid.
It’s not a waste of effort if there is a possibility of other trees coming into your vicinity in the future. By growing tall before the competition arrives, you get a big advantage over those who come later.
I believe that solitary tree is a symbol of the failure of neoliberalism…
BTW, the writer’s name is Dawkins, not Dawkin:
When I saw it, I instantly thought of a passage that’s deep in Richard Dawkin’s book The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution:
Some banal trivia about that building:
The tree on top is supposed to symbolize the height of the trees felled around English Bay in the early 1900s.
Head-on, that building looks like a giant syringe, symbolizing Vancouver’s late 1900s: http://static.panoramio.com/photos/origi…
I was told Leonard Nimoy lives in that building. Not sure if its true or not. But the tree could be a Vulcan Import.
Maybe it’s a green lightning rod.
Am I only the only one noticing what looks like a jumper in that photo?
That tree has aspiration, man. That tree is way beyond a normal life form. That tree is better than us.
It’s part of a rooftop garden, and it receives a lot of comment and notice from visitors. I think the rooftop garden’s intent is to deflect heat and thereby reduce energy consumption in the summer. But there’s also the, “Hey, we have a full-grown tree on our roof,” element.
whoa no WAY
If the tree’s pollen or seeds are dispersed by wind, being taller increases the likelihood of reproductive success.