How the Alchemy of Trees Will Shift the World in a Positive Direction

I just love these awesome solutions!

Today, I inspired a friend of mine Heleen Verbeek with the Alchemy of Trees. During the next three months, she is sharing her knowledge at Africa Wood Grow, a great project by Roeland Lelieveld.

Her husband has a job supporting small-scale mining communities in Africa. The gold is in the soil. And of course, the children are digging. They don’t have many other options. The circumstances of these families are horrendous. And the world is looking the other way.

So, I’m mighty glad these young leaders are doing something impactful.

Heleen is a permaculturist, just like me. We build food forests, also called forest gardens. And we got to talk about the productivity of biodiverse forests. I asked her if she and her husband had discussed the alchemy of trees and perennial phytofarming. It must interest them both.

It’s about phytomining and resourceful, biodiverse forests.

Trees are accumulators, you know. They hoard metals and many minerals. And indigenous cultures are so very famous for their alchemy! They use processes to turn one chemical element into another using nature’s technology in a slightly different way than we do with synthetic chemistry.

Alchemy? Isn’t that some scary magic?

No, don’t be silly. It’s not scary. It’s science. The wisdom of Nature, our Planet, Gaia. Nothing magical about it. Just biochemistry, ecology, the knowledge of flow, and loads of common sense.

Did you know that an apple tree accumulates cyanide? Nothing scary about this either. The apple tree is wise enough to keep the toxin there where animals won’t eat it. In the branches. And the leaves.

That’s why we don’t eat the core of an apple. And if we accidentally do anyway? Well, no stress. I never heard people die from eating an apple pit, have you?

On the contrary. The old saying is: “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.” And I did have a colleague once who always ate apples when he had to travel in India. His European stomach wasn’t used to the spices and bacteria there. So he ate apples. And it kept him very healthy and able to eat all the Indian food he liked so much.

But that’s beside the subject of this story. Many tree species are nowadays used to clean mining areas and other heavily polluted areas. It’s called eco-remediation. But why stop there?

Why not clean and harvest the cyanide for pharma use for instance? In Living Systems we keep the trees alive. We work with them. We don’t exploit them.

Shifts of Our Times

As you well know by now, our think-and-do-tank Abundanism is all about the shifts of our current times. Mike and I design all kinds of Living Systems. We talk to international leaders. We inspire many young people and get some movement in the stuck, stupid ways that we have used to organize our world.

From mining to regenerative farming. From chemistry to alchemy. From industrial to electronic, connected technology. From monoculture to polyculture. In short, from linear systems to Living Systems.

All in strong collaboration with the abundance of Nature.

In Las Gaviotas, Colombia they have already used the Alchemy of Trees for more than 30 years. They produce turpentine together with the pine trees in a biochemical process without destroying them. And they increase biodiversity at the same time. They built their whole local economy with it.

And I know they are using the Alchemy of Trees in other nature-based solutions areas, too. Permaculture is full of these super solutions for our current rollercoaster times.

You can produce gold together with trees. Or cobalt, or lithium with all kinds of alchemy processes. The processes can be compared to rubber tapping sometimes. Or we harvest leaves and branches while pruning and design a process in a local factory. Then we use the chemistry knowledge of phytomining.

The big difference between phytomining and perennial phytofarming is that we use processes that keep the plants, the trees, the mycelium networks, and the seaweeds alive. Alchemy works with the different phases of an element. It’s really not that difficult. And the good thing is, we use only local resources.

And isn’t it fitting in the Age of Aquarius, the liquid age, that we get the gold, cobalt, and lithium out as liquids? Or a gas, plasma, or other phases? The time for solids is over. We can turn molecules into solids again in our labs and local production facilities.

Or use it as liquids or gas or plasmas in our new technologies for smartphones and batteries of the future. There are innovation opportunities enough!

In our linear world, we always kill a tree or plant to get the molecules out. In Living Systems the host never dies. We just work together. Collaboration between species.

Biochemistry. Alchemy. No big deal…

We do have to combine the right species of trees with the place where they will find happiness (native species) and embed them in biodiverse forests. Humans are meant to harvest, we just have to make sure to connect to the trees and never take more than half. The species will thank us and grow bigger and stronger.

Prof. Robin Wall Kimmerer did a lot of research about the principles and wrote Braiding Sweetgrass.

Sharing economy, remember? Trees can be as much an owner of the value they create as we humans are. The DAOs, internet communities with a shared bank account, will make it all happen in an economic sense.

And of course, we will solve all our energy issues with the Alchemy of Plants and electronic, connected solutions too.

Imagine how the geopolitics will shift when we get the hang of it? Now, China has all the resources and rare metals. This means they have the power. But with the Alchemy of Bacteria, Fungi, Algae, Plants, and Insects this power will shift dramatically. We can all create our own resources locally.

Biobased will rule. And is finally able to feed and power local communities and keep us all healthy respecting Nature.

Imagine all tiny forests in cities as resource forests. Imagine larger rural areas with restored ecosystems to be resource forests for all human basic needs without harming the planet at all. Just doing good. Entering the positive spiral.

The Alchemy of Trees and Plants will change all!

Permaculture Learning

Where do YOU see perennial phytofarming already happening in the world? Heleen and I are mighty curious!

And if you think, how do I create a Living System? What’s this permaculture wisdom she’s talking about? Consider an online Permaculture Course. It’s free (donation-based) and the beautiful lessons are designed by 40 women permaculturists in the team of Heather Jo Flores.

No, I don’t get paid to mention her course. And no, I’m not one of the 40 women. Heather-Jo doesn’t even know I’m mentioning her course here unless she checks her tags.

That’s how we, permaculture women, do stuff. We give first. The receiving will materialize later and often from very surprising directions…

You can find me somewhere on our beautiful planet, with my hands in the soil and my eyes focused on the stars. Abundanism and Linktree. Thank you, Mike, for adding your wise energy to my words.

© Désirée Driesenaar, 2021