Trees can live for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.  They are not merely objects for botanical study, but are entwined with tradition, myth, and folklore.  Trees such as the Major Oak and Tortworth Chestnut are part of the nation’s history.  But should trees be regarded as conscious beings?  Are they aware of and do they remember the history that unfolds around them?  More pertinently, can we use dowsing to access that consciousness – albeit a consciousness no doubt very different to our own – and so communicate with a tree?

We know that plants reacting to their environments.  Phototropism, where a plant responds to and tracks the light of the sun, is a common phenomenon.  But plants such as the runner bean or bougainvillea probe their surroundings with tendrils, that can then wrap themselves around suitable supports, allowing the plant to climb and spread.  It can, of course, be argued that such actions are merely mechanical, causal responses to physical stimuli. 

But, there has long been a recognition that plants are consciously aware of their environments.  In experiments in the 1960s, Cleve Backster sought to use a lie detector to establish whether a rubber plants might ‘feel’ pain.  The plant reacted, not to the experience of being damaged, but seemingly telepathically to Backster’s mental intention to damage it.

More recently the work of Peter Wohlleben and Suzanne Simard has begun to demonstrate plants’ complexity, both as individual and social beings.  They do not merely react to their environment but communicate with each other about it.  In Africa, acacia trees that are being eaten by giraffes are known to send chemical signals, carried on the wind, to neighbouring acacias.  This stimulates the neighbours to pump toxins into their leaves, making them unpalatable to the predator.  Perhaps this is again merely a mechanical response.  But Wohlleben, a German forester by trade and experience, argues that individual trees have personalities, in that neighbouring trees of the same species will, for example, react differently to the onset of winter.  One will rush to lose its leaves, battening down as it were, while another will hold onto its leaves far longer, photosynthesising the last, precious, autumnal sunlight.

Simard, a Canadian academic, has proposed the idea of the ‘wood wide web’, arguing that trees are linked together by their roots and the mycelia of fungi.  This web or network of roots and mycelia allows trees to communicate with each other (for example warning about predators), but also to support each other by sending nutrients.  Any given group of trees will have a mother.  This is an older, more experienced tree, that nurtures and protects those around it.

My personal experience of what I suspect is the telepathic power of trees to communicate came during a BSD conference in Moreton-in-Marsh.  One session was held at Batesford Arboretum.  The small band of dowsers noticed a group of redwoods.  They looked and felt troubled, so we agreed to take a moment to send healing to them.  During this healing I felt the existential dread of one of the trees.  It feared for the survival of its species.  This was a time of catastrophic forest fires in California that were threatening very ancient redwood forests.  This tree was aware of the plight of its California relatives.  The experience was at once deeply disturbing, but also enlightening – a privileged insight into the consciousness of trees.

Trees have played their part in dowsing for many years, and in more than merely providing the traditional dowser’s v-shape stick.  Trees can provide an excellent confirmation of water dowsing, for example.  Alder and willow are water loving trees.  They will grow above a water line.  Guy Underwood saw, in the 1960s, how trees interacted with earth energies.  An energetic spiral could twist a tree’s trunk and branches, and a line might stunt the growth of the hedge through which it passed. 

Whitethorn, or May, is a quietly remarkable tree.  It often seems to be the home of the guardian of a site, and I have found whitethorn guarding the entrances to earth works such as Maiden Castle and Mount Caburn.  On top of the South Downs, on Windover Hill, near Wilmington in East Sussex, there is a lone whitethorn (see image 1).  But this tree is the home of the guardian of the long barrow that runs beside it, and dowsing brings out the sinuous earth energy lines that connect it to the barrow (see image 2).