If You Were a Tree... - Fan Questions | StarTalk

I'd want to be planted in a wide-open meadow so that every one of my branches can receive all the sunlight at once. I don't want to have to compete for the photons from the Sun, which is what goes on daily, hourly, in a forest, especially rainforests where there's the canopy and then everything else below has to be able to live without direct sunlight.

And the branches of the trees that keep reaching for the canopy, those branches that are below, they drop dead because there's no sunlight to sustain them. I don't want to be just sort of a just leaves on the top. I want full plumage; I want to be old and wise in the middle of a meadow.

And there's nothing more beautiful than a solitary tree in the middle of a field. It invites you to sit under it. I don't have people come sit under my branches and add a dimension of romance to their lives under the branches of my tree.

One risk, however, if you are a tree in the middle of a meadow or in the middle of a field, is that you will get hit by lightning. All right, lightning does not like moving through air, and if you're reaching up into the air, it's gonna go through basically your wet bark. The lightning will pass through your wet bark before it connects the cloud to the ground.

But maybe that's worth it, so that all the time until I'm struck by lightning, where it amputates one of my limbs, I think it'll be worth it up to that moment for having a completely full plumage as an ornament in the center of the field.