As people find finances hard, many revert to or include traditional remedies to bolster their own, and their animals' health and wellbeing. Ideally all types of medicine should be shared, equally available to cover all kinds of dis-ease, different kinds of practitioners holistically helping each other, amalgamating brilliant new technical inventions with old, traditional herbal favourites, sometimes in use for thousands of years.

As it is, many international tree remedies, such as Tea Tree Cures (as popular as healing dark chocolate berries or therapeutic red wine grapes) are enjoyed around the world. Trees have far more complex DNA than us, subtly finetuned over millennia (compare recent human experiments). Did dinosaurs eat magnolias? A classic source of positive energy, trees are traditionally used to harmonise, to cure emotional and physical problems, turn dis-ease into ease.

Tree bark, twigs, sap, flowers, buds, leaves, nuts and berries have provided tried and tested medicines for many First Nation Cultures, including those in America, Canada and Australia. ‘Australian Bush Remedies’ now share combinations of curative essences discovered long ago by sensitive Aboriginal peoples with upmarket production methods. Some trees, like the Dragon’s Blood tree, with its bright red medicinal sap, have versatile uses. See India’s Neem tree, appreciated in Aryuvedic medicine.

Cedar oil (famously used to embalm ancient Egyptians), antidotes bacteria, discourages mould and insects. The shells of Black walnuts are used in the preparation of iodine. Pacific Yew Tree bank contains paclitaxel used to treat various cancers. Poplar leaves contain antibiotics. Quinine, cinnamon and other natural drugs and spices are similarly derived from trees. Ginko Trees, cherished in Chinese Traditional Medicine, are scientifically proven to be strong in antidioxants. Similarly, the greatly used Cassia Fistula tree has also been researched as a useful antidote to Covid-19.

 People now plant ‘edible hedges’ to feed birds, insects, animals, and us. Homemade cordials, taking advantage of vitamin packed wild fruit trees such as European rowans, plums, crab apples, elder berries, and rose hips are traditionally designed to antidote winter colds. Fashionable foragers eat young lime and hawthorn leaves (less bother than growing lettuce) whilst some select specific tree species, like Sea Buckthorn, to create invigorating and restorative teas.

Old shamanistic stories and folkloric legends recall when humans had closer connections with the natural world, linking closely with other forms of life. Trees and animals were envisaged as powerful allies. Trees, appreciated as friends, or for creating safe havens, provided peaceful meeting places. The Ogham Alphabet, created using tree symbols, illustrates the vital part trees played in the Celtic Imagination.

 Pagan and animistic peoples revere earth energies and tree spirits. Trees represent fertility, and provide constant images of wisdom and balance, ‘as above so below.’ Trees are both deeply rooted in the earth whilst wide open to the sky, effortlessly grounded and illuminated at the same time, a lesson for us not to be so earthed that we are boring or so imaginative we are nuts. Evergreen trees are symbols of continuity frequently inspiring the world’s poetry and religious festivals. Think, for example, of Christmas Trees. Even when manufactured in plastic, dead copies of the real thing, smothered in more plastic decorations, they nevertheless hark back to natural, shared green roots, recalling the comforting concept of life continuing throughout the bleakest of winters.

These potent energy builders deserve respect. They inspire endless art and craft forms, such as timelessly abstracted Islamic tile and carpet patterns. Celebrated in wintery hymns, like the Holly and the Ivy, or captured in spring love songs praising fresh, new Willow shoots, ‘trees of life’ literally represent not only seasonal change but unity with the living world.

There are said to be seventy three thousand, three hundred species of trees. Many overcome extreme environmental challenges, taking root in varied conditions - boiling or freezing, mountainous or marshy. Some of their seeds only germinate after fire, like those regenerating the land Australian bush fires. Some seeds and nuts travel well. Coconuts - specifically the Coco de Mer - can float at sea for months before landing to colonise new territories, like tiny Polynesian islands. Mangroves move, if slowly. Over millions of years trees have efficiently adjusted growth speeds and life cycles to take advantage of fluid weather conditions, adapting to thrive in diverse soil types, from heavy clays to desert sands. Creative combinations of colours, shapes and scents manifested by these ‘brainless’ creatures form exquisite flowers and juicy fruits subtly encouraging other species to process their pollination and seed dispersal for them. Trees evolve wisely, without our aggressive, destructive impact.

 Versatility is key. Consider the vast numbers of tree species on the planet, ranging from tiny, slow growing arctic Pines to tall, fast growing Bamboos. Admired for their size, height and longevity, many species - like Californian Sequoias - put us in perspective. Trees explore architectural solutions. Take shape in formal, geometric patterns, like Monkey Puzzles, or select asymmetric, fluid forms like wind woven Weeping Willows. Complex lifeforms, combining their survival remits with aesthetic perfection, trees have just about reached perfection. What is more deftly designed or efficiently materialised? When did you ever see an ugly tree? Trees attract attention, generate joy and add subtler, frequently invisible, contributions to life.

 Ironically, scientists declare they have just 'discovered' a 'new' tree species, logically labelling and listing its values to humans, while it may have existed quietly and productively for millions of years. Every growing thing must have its own qualities. Hopefully we will learn to teach oncoming generations to seek, appreciate and then carefully use them constructively.

Trees should not just be dismissed as so many useful inanimate objects - impersonally whacked into the ground like so many dead posts. Used to stop flooding, for us, to improve air quality, for us, to make wind breaks, for us, to generate building materials, for us, to provide food, for us, or, in the case of the huge, hollow African Baobab, to provide water, homes, safe havens in war, for us. Currently everything is ‘for us,’ not the rich, biodiversity we are an intrinsic part of and should be protecting.

         Baobabs, bat pollinated, build massive, swollen trunks up to ten metres across retaining fresh water even in the harshest, hottest conditions. We live in them, make oil from their seeds, use their fibrous bark for fabric and eat their fruits and leaves.

Are trees to remain silent, unappreciated slaves? Passive pawns in humanity's thoughtless, greedy power games? Sensitivity to trees, unique individuals like ourselves, occasionally remains. Trees - when loved – can alter traffic in Ireland and Japan!  Long loved or deeply respected trees can cause roads to be rerouted, or to flow gracefully around them, as magical or spiritual personalities are intuitively sensed, valued and protected.

Once we unthinkingly planted straight lines of imported trees, ramrod straight pines, arranged like so many parade ground soldiers, to be automatically chopped down, once high, for the timber industry (possibly enjoying advantageous tax loop holes). We might thus obliterate millions of years of an ancient forest’s intricately interwoven living tapestries.

Quick plantations do not generate rich, varied stages of growth, ranging from germinating seedlings to mature flowering and fruiting trees to decaying trees enriching the soil. The circle of life is cut. Ancient woodland could provide a range of cosmopolitan habitats. Basement dwellers, midlevel occupants, and high rise inhabitants sought safe, suitable habitats. There was ample choice – snug in earthy roots, secure within the trunk, or safe up in the skyline. Arboreal housing estates encouraged co-dependent life cycles, symbiosis, interrelating microbes, mosses, fungi, lichens, plants, bushes, insects, animals and birds.

 Destroying old forests, diverse unions of local trees, formerly at the heart of bustling, interactive communities of native plants, birds and animals, just evaporated. We are spectacularly efficient at creating barren landscapes. We kill through selfishness, as recorded in early conservational books like ‘Silent Spring.’ Similarly, massacring statuesque specimens in the Amazon jungle, logging our own lungs, we seek quick cash via speedy mono cultures, proving yet another way to shoot ourselves in the foot, or higher.

We are, or can be, pointlessly destructive, consciously cruel. Trees are not. When did you see a tree suddenly chop down a group of healthy, innocent, young humans at the ankles, to improve their view? Explain the motives of two healthy men secretly taking heavy machinery up to Hadrian's Wall to murder a special, weather defying tree, commemorated in film, loved by all – for the pure hell of it? Did this action bring them joy? Will they be proud to tell their children and their grandchildren of their unevolved exploits?

Although drug companies use Salix from willow, and play with other natural ingredients, they hardly credit them, or mention their low cost. Material mindsets still focus on monetising illness, making people addicted to ‘products,’ making money out of pain, insensitively advertising addictive pain killers, rather than trying to tackle the emotional roots of a problem or incentivising prevention. Which is better?

Natural medicine makers, like Dr Bach, employ a range of tree species. He avoided manmade chemical compounds, worried by dangerous after and side effects, as with thalidomide maiming babies. Giving up a lucrative career seeking to create safer medicines, he advocated the healing qualities found in trees and plants. Cherry Plum, for example, can calm fearful nerves, foster inner peace, to restore mental balance. This wild tree, with fragile, spring blossom, became a key ingredient in his world renowned 'Rescue Remedy,' a popular combination used to stabilise discordant energies, as when nervous before exams.  

 Tesla said that to understand life we should think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration. Dr Bach's medicines remedies work to adjust negative emotional energies and resultant physical distortions. Adding positive energies to antidote, and thus overcome pschycological imbalances, he sought to relieve stress. He felt that harmonious minds facilitate a body’s natural healing capacities.

Many animals can heal themselves. Domestic animals in fields, like cows, sheep, goats and horses, choose their own natural cures, munching specific leaves to remedy aches and pains. They can instinctively recognise which hedgerow medicines to select.

 Trees themselves generously give up their energy to help ailing friends and relatives. Drawing up water and minerals from the soil they pass food and messages to young, weak, and old, depleted trees - using shared, connected microcondrial highways, woodwide webs.

1. OLIVE: bioactive compounds used to treat various ailments 2. WEEPING WILLOW: reliable pain relief 3. BLACK ELDER: anti-microbial, antiviral, anti-inflammatory properties used to alleviate symptoms and duration of Covid-19 4. SPRUCE: Norwegian variant particularly effective for severe, pharma-resistant bacterial infections 5. CEDAR: antimicrobial, steam used by indigenous people to treat chest illness 6. HAWTHORN: used to treat cardiac diseases for thousands of years 7. POPLAR sooths upper respiratory infections and a anti-microbial wash for open wounds and bruises 8. BEECH: used in poultices for soothing burns and frostbite, and clearing lung problems.

Communicating above ground, trees send out invisible healing ions, altruistically releasing scent signals to alert nearby neighbours to oncoming dangers. Warnings against predatory insects puts fellow trees on the alert. They then protectively flood delicious leaves with bitter, unappetising chemicals. Do trees warn each other against destructive humans? We have killed so many species already, and a good 30% are said to be at risk, isn’t it time to appreciate them properly?

 Teaching children to enjoy nature and all of organic life antidotes overdoses of AI and IT. Involving young people in ‘Forest School’ activities or in planting native and celebration trees can create lifelong benefits, nourishing a sense of involvement and ownership. This was the aim of the ‘One Tree per Child Charity’ which sought to link each child, especially urban ones, with at least one tree, so that they could grow up together in harmony, as combined forces in each child’s developing mind. One popular environmentalist was turned on to tree care as a child by seeing his father plant trees along a local road. This triggered a life time’s interest in trees, provoking many, resultant green actions.

Whether relaxing, meditating, walking, running, climbing, swimming, birding, picnicking, painting, singing, exercising, photographing, protecting vulnerable young trees, collecting seeds for propagation, or inventing new games for new generations, recharging times spent amongst trees provides us with many different tonics on different levels.

Where would we be without trees? What can you do to upgrade old beliefs about human superiority to other life forms, and encourage the evolution of a truly appreciative love of trees? Trees are peaceful guardians silently drawing in light and purifying our air.

Learning how to recognise different types of trees, identifying their specific shapes and scents, forms and flowers, their uses and graces, can help further people’s links with the surrounding natural world. So, too, does spending relaxing time alone or with friends and loved ones exploring woodlands. ‘Green Prescribing’ has been scientifically proved to lower blood pressure. It reduces blood sugars in diabetics and, through enjoyable experiences, secretly boosts immune systems. Sounds of leaves rustling in the breeze can calm busy city dwellers, ‘Forest Bathing restores.’ Living landscapes are the antithesis of noisy cities filled with hard, grey, angular shapes and discordant sounds disseminated from fast traffic and manmade machines.  The Japanese Ministry of the Environment, appreciating such subtle natural effects, lists Sagano Bamboo Forest amongst their ‘100 Soundscapes of Japan.’

People took cuttings from this deliberately slaughtered Sycamore (where people in love proposed, or chose to scatter a loved ones’ ashes). Similarly, physicists try to preserve the lineage of Newton's famous apple tree. A famous Bodhi tree is cherished in Sri Lanka because it originated from a branch of the famous Bodhi Tree which Buddha sat under while receiving enlightenment.

These international tree lovers may be motivated by nostalgia. But idealistic, conscientious botanists working within the Amazon jungle seek to preserve its rich, arboreal heritage for more caring reasons - rushing to capture natural cures for cancer, or future epidemics, to eliminate unexpected after and side effects conjured up by potent, new factory-made ‘cures.’