Fate & Fabled

You can't tell from looking at me, but I actually grew up deep in the woods.

My childhood home was an antiquated log cabin surrounded by so much forest, you couldn't even see the distant road in the winter.

So I spent my free time playing among the trees, climbing their branches, and seeing what treasures I could discover among their roots.

We relied on wood from those trees to warm our house, cook our meals, and heat up water.

Some provided food, others syrup, and they all provided shade.

That childhood, while certainly imperfect, gave me a deep appreciation for nature.

I was so grateful for everything the trees provided that I did the 21st century equivalent of begging Gaia to turn me into a dryad and got a tattoo of an oak tree on my arm.

But I was by no means the first person to pay my respects to the majestic tree.

Humans around the world have been doing that for thousands of years in ways that were immortalized in our myths.

[light upbeat music] Even without all of the vital, practical things trees provide, it's hard not to see them as divine or magical.

Their sheer size can seem to connect the Earth to the heavens, and their centuries long lifespans mean a single tree can watch over a family or community for several generations, long enough that its origin fades into legend.

Even the deciduous trees that shed their leaves every year blossom again in the spring, showing that they weren't dead at all, just taking a little nap before it returned with its gifts.

It was easy for many of our ancestors to interpret something so immortal and abundant as the gift or even embodiment of a god.

But I think the reciprocal nature of our relationship to trees is the real reason they're so common in folklore.

We rely on them, but they also rely on us.

And beneath every story about the wonders trees provide, there's a sometimes not so hidden message about what will happen if we don't take care of them.

In Thailand, Buddhist folklore tells of a tree called the Nariphon or Makkaliphon that grows fruit in the shape of young women.

According to one of the Jataka or a series of texts that described the various lives of the Buddha, the trees were planted in a sacred grove by the god Indra to protect, Maddi, Buddha's wife in a previous life.

In that life the Buddha was known as Prince Vessantara, the son of a woman who was beloved by Indra.

Vessantara was so generous that he was exiled from his own kingdom for giving a gift that he shouldn't have.

While in exile, Vessantara and Maddi traveled through the legendary Himavanta forest full of dangerous creatures.

It's said that Indra shaped the fruit like a young woman to entice ill-intentioned men who would be drawn to the Nariphon for obvious and disgusting reasons.

Thus, they would be distracted from chasing Maddi.

If a man picked the Nariphon's fruit and took it to his bed, gross, he would quickly find himself sterile and stripped of any powers he might possess.

Women, however, were immune to the fruit, and instead could use it as a fertility talisman if they waited for the fruit to fall naturally from the tree after a week of growing.

The location of the legendary Himavanta forest and the grove of Nariphon trees is unknown, but you can still find street vendors in Thailand who claim to sell these woman shaped dried fruits to boost fertility.

Just a few years ago, a video circulating on social media showing what appeared to be one of these Nariphon trees got a lot of attention.

Though the videos were never verified as real, this shows that the myth of woman-shaped fruit is alive and well in Southeast Asia.

So for some cultures, trees and their fruits were gifts from the gods to us humans.

Other stories positioned trees as the botanical embodiment of a mystical figure.

For example, the dryads who helped inspire my tattoo were minor Greek goddesses or nymphs who inhabited and looked after trees and woodlands.

Dryads served as the spirits of trees, and when they flourished, their tree thrived.

When a dryad was sick or injured, so was their tree.

Originally, the term dryad only referred to the spirits of oak trees, which were considered sacred to Zeus.

Ash trees were guarded by Meliae, certain mountain trees by Oreiades, and fruit trees by Meliades.

Laurels were inhabited by the Daphnaie, named for the water nymph Daphne, who was unlucky enough to catch the god Apollo's attention.

After running from the sun god's advances, Daphne implored Gaia, the Earth mother, for help.

She was transformed into a laurel tree and saved from Apollo's relentless pursuit, only for the laurels she protected to become sacred to the god she fled.

Dryad eventually became the general term for any tree nymph due to the oak trees prevalence in ancient Greece and their connection to the king of the gods.

As spirits of the forest, dryads could make plants grow or die as they pleased, but mostly they acted as stewards of their woods.

This idea that trees and other elements of nature each had their own living spirit certainly wasn't unique to the Greeks.

Animism was practiced by many of Europe's pre-Christian pagans, like the Celts and Germanic tribes who respected or even worshiped the spirits of inanimate things.

Those spirits weren't necessarily considered gods, however.

As far as we can tell, the Celtic Tree of Life, or Crann Bethadh, was central to Celtic culture, but it didn't represent a specific important deity.

Instead, it represented the balance of forces in nature.

The Celts saw a beauty in the way that the trees roots stretched deep below ground while its branches stretched high into the heavens, demonstrating the connection between different realms of the cosmos.

To the Celts, the tree of life was an oak tree, likely because these were the oldest tallest trees in their sacred forests, so tall that they would often be struck by lightning, which would be interpreted as a sign of their favor by the gods.

Plenty of other cultures had their own tree of life that represented the balance of natural forces, but some of them also provided connections between different worlds.

These are often called world or cosmic trees.

We mentioned the baobab tree in our episode on Yoruba folklore.

This tree was said to be the home of the Orisha in their heavenly realm before Obatala created land down here on Earth.

The baobab is often called the African Tree of Life because of the way it looms over the desert, providing shade and hundreds of valuable uses with its bark and sap.

Those trees can live for 3000 years and grow over 100 feet tall and 50 feet wide.

Many origin myths for the baobab involve it being planted upside down.

In one story, the baobab tree kept walking after it was planted, so God ripped it up and replanted it upside down.

In another, the hyena was assigned the job of planting the baobab tree, but found it so ugly that he planted its branches in the dirt.

Another cosmic tree on the other side of the world is the Ceiba, sacred to many peoples throughout the tropics, including the Maya of Mesoamerica and the Taino from Puerto Rico and the Caribbean.

The Mayans called it Yaxche and believed it was a world tree that acted as the scaffolding for their universe.

The Ceiba trees' irregular bloom cycle demonstrated the unbreakable and traversable tether between life and death.

So it's no surprise that Yaxche's roots and branches served as portals to the Mayan afterlife.

Spirits could climb them to reach their final destinations.

The Ceiba tree is such an important cultural symbol that when a 400 year old Ceiba blossomed on Vieques island after being ravaged by Hurricanes Irma and Maria, the islanders saw it as a sign of hope and encouragement that they would bounce back from all the damage.

Perhaps the most well-known world tree for mythology is the Norse Yggdrasil.

This cosmic tree was said to hold all the nine worlds of the Norse cosmos in its roots and branches, including Midgard and Asgard.

Some sources claim that Yggdrasil is an ash tree, but that's hotly debated.

Regardless of its exact species, Yggdrasil's health is vital to the health of the Norse universe and to their head god, Odin.

According to legend, Odin sacrificed his own blood and his eye to himself by voluntarily hanging from Yggdrasil for nine days, as one does.

In doing so, he gained knowledge and wisdom.

World trees serve the paramount purpose of balancing life forces and supporting a stable universe.

But if you have more selfish desires, you'll want to look for a wishing tree.

Throughout the world, ancient and modern people alike have made wishes on trees by tying ribbons to their branches, hammering special coins into their bark, or tossing notes into their canopies.

Hindu myths tell of the Kalpavriksha, a wish granting tree that emerged from the primordial waters during a legendary battle between the gods or devas and demons or asuras.

After being poisoned, the devas searched for a healing elixir at the bottom of a milky ocean.

But in their churning brought up many treasures from the depths.

It's unclear what type of tree the Kalpavriksha is, though many compare it to the banyan, one of India's most sacred trees.

Myths like these make trees sacred, or at least worthy of our care and protection.

Other stories act as cautionary tales that scare us into looking after our woody friends.

Japanese folklore has tales of the Jubokko, a yokai who forms when enough blood has been violently spilled on its roots.

These trees who have seen too little kindness and received too few thanks turn hostile and use their sharp branches to grab anyone who gets too close and drain their blood.

Having grown up surrounded by trees in a lifestyle slightly more reminiscent of our ancestors than most, I personally understand the importance of treating them well.

A sick tree on your property can fall down on your possessions or spread rot to its neighbors.

Trees become the stuff of nightmares when we neglect them, but they literally keep us alive when we give them the bare minimum of care.

Let's all take a hint from these ancient cultures all over the world and stop every once in a while to see trees for the true gifts they are.

Clearly having a close connection with nature is something very personal to me, which is why I'm so excited to tell you about a new series on PBS Terra called "Women of the Earth."

It's a series that introduces you to women who are pioneering movements to heal the Earth from climate change.

There is a link in the description.

We hope you check it out and the rest of PBS's Earth Month playlist too.

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