Natural selection never came up with a way for Douglas fir trees to grow higher than 350 to 400 feet. So will humans ever use genetic engineering to lift that limit?
CORVALLIS, Ore. – The Douglas-fir, state tree of Oregon, towering king of old-growth forests and one of the tallest tree species on Earth, finally stops growing taller because it just can't pull water any higher, a new study concludes.
This limit on height is somewhere above 350 feet, or taller than a 35-story building, and is a physiological tradeoff between two factors in the tree's wood - a balance between efficiency and safety in transporting water to the uppermost leaves.
The findings are being published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, by a team of scientists from Oregon State University and the U.S.D.A. Forest Service. The research was funded by grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service.
The article briefly describes the limitations on tree growth caused by the mechanism by which water is lifted up through the tree. Well, okay. But can bioengineering produce a better way for a tree to grow much taller? Will humans (or, more likely, transhumans) some day conduct competitions to genetically engineer trees and other species to lift them far beyond their existing limits? I see every discovery of why plants and animals are limited as constituting a challenge to figure out how to make biological organisms that can exceed their documented limits. Human sports limits will be one focus of competition. But I expect trees, plants, animals to inspire other competitions to lift biological performance.
Before you say this is far fetched, biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey and entrepreneur David Gobel co-founded the Methuselah Mouse Prize which basically incentivizes scientists to genetically engineer mice to make them live longer. If the promoters of this prize succeed in their goal of speeding up the development rejuvenation therapies for humans then you might live long enough to both enter contests to create higher growing trees and to live hundreds of more years to see which tree designs reach new heights.
By Randall Parker at 2008 August 11 09:01 PM Nature LimitsCool Idea, but I don't think we need to help Douglas fir grow taller. Especially if you understand how tall 400 feet (122 meters) really is. These trees attain a wide range of maximum heights given proper wind protection, soil, moister, elevation, climate. Today anything over 225 or 250 feet is rare for Douglas fir. Our tallest fir today is around 336 ft in Coos bay, Ore. but the real giants have almost entirely been logged.
A felled 380 -FOOTER was measured by steel tape by a team of US foresters in 1900 near the Nisqually River, Wa (Edward Tyson Allen, Report of 1900). The US forestry chief Richard McArdle measured a tree near Mineral lake, Wa. in 1925 at 393 ft and 15 ft in diameter--A cross section of this tree still resides at the Wind River Experimental Forest, Wa. A Douglas fir nearly 400 feet tall once stood in Ravena Park, Seattle, Wa. until the 1920's. "The American Society of Naturalists" 1899, reported fir trees over 400 feet about the base of Mt Rainier, Wa. An 1876 report from the Puget Sound, Wa. records a fallen fir measuring over 400 feet long.
British Columbia can claim the tallest Douglas firs with accurate detail: 1896, a fir felled at Kerrisdale, S. Vancouver measured about 400 feet long, 13 ft 8 in diameter, bark 16 in thick, and was sawed into lumber at Hastings Mill. A 358 foot Fir was felled by William Shannon, in 1881 near Cloverdale, Surrey B.C. In 1907 a 352 -FOOTER was felled by lumbermen in Lynn Valley, N. Vancouver, and measured 9 ft 8 ins in diameter. By far the tallest Douglas fir in Lynn Valley, B.C. was felled in 1902 on the Alfred Nye property, at Centre Road, by the Tremblay Bros. This growing tree measured 415 feet (126.5 meters) tall and was 14 ft 3 inches in diameter at the butt, 5 ft from the ground. This tree was split by powder charges and sent to the mill at Moodyville.
The biggest trees in Lynn valley were up to 1300 years old, and I highly doubt we could bio-engineer 415 foot Douglas firs in a 100 years time span. Fun to imagine though.