"It's in the roots, not the branches, that a tree's greatest strengths lie..."

When I was in 8th grade, my parents took my sister and I on a vacation to California.  There were several things that I wanted to see on our trip.  Alcatraz was one of them, but that's a story for another post.  I also remember wanting to see the famous redwood trees that you can drive a car through, and while there are several such trees (there's even a park called "Drive-Thru Tree Park" in Leggett, California), the most famous one is called the Chandelier Tree. 

Here's the thing though - there are actually two different species of these sequoia redwood trees in California.  The giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) is also called the "Sierra redwood" and grows to an average height of 165 to 280 feet and diameters ranging from 20 to 26 feet.  The "California coast redwood" (Sequoia sempervirens) can grow to as high as 370 feet (in fact, the world's first-, second-, third-, and sixth-tallest trees are redwoods) and are more slender than the sequoias. 

There is an old saying that says, "A small tree with strong roots will outlive a big tree with weak ones."  And what truly sets the giant sequoias and redwoods apart from all other trees is not their size, it's their root system.  Their roots are remarkably shallow (you would think that a really tall tree would have really deep roots) and only go about 6 to 12 feet into the ground.  The roots of several redwoods are intertwined with each other to form a tight chain-like network so that individual trees share nutrients with each other and depend upon one another for strength. 

There's another tree that has a similar root system called the Pando.  "Pando" is Latin for "I spread out."  The Pando is actually a clonal colony of an individual male quaking aspen (Populis tremuloides) which has been determined to be a single living organism.  It is, in fact, an entire group of "trees" that are growing from a common root system covering just over 100 acres of land in the Fishlake National Forest of southern Utah.  The root system is thought to be over 80,000 years old (though some scientists estimate that the age is closer to 1 million years) and has over 40,000 stems ("trees") which die individually and are replaced by new stems growing from the root system. 

There is a beautiful metaphor here.  Nature has found "strength in numbers" to be an incredibly stable, long-lasting model for these trees.  We could learn a lot from Earth's co-inhabitants it seems.  First, building a strong root system - say, core values, morals, and beliefs - is just as important for individuals and organizations as it for the giant sequoias and redwoods of California.  Without a strong root system, we just don't last.  Second, we can go much farther together than we can do so alone.  Imagine what we could accomplish if a group of like-minded individuals with the same set of core values, morals, and beliefs locked hands together and set out to change the world.  Just imagine.