Students at Cal Poly make major tree discovery

It’s not particularly windy and its trunk is structurally sound, yet this tree is constantly leaning.

So what is making this Cook pine tree do something different than all the other trees around it?

“We don’t know what genes or what lack of genes are contributing to this growth pattern but their genes cause them to respond to their environment in a way that’s never been seen before,” explains Researcher Jason Johns.

As part of his Masters research at Cal Poly, Johns and his classmates lead by Professor Matt Ritter discovered that the Cook pines always lean towards the equator no matter where they’re planted.

But what makes a tree grow straight isn’t something that has been really studied either.
“So now we have this outlier of a tree that grows unlike any other and now it’s a great model system for finding out how all the other trees grow [and] why do trees grow straight,” Johns says.

Johns believes this discovery came out of the power of curiosity and hopes now more research will continue, telling us: “It is just a reminder of the fact that there are so many other oddities in nature that we have yet to open our eyes to.”