More-Than-Humans

The ipe tree who provided shelter and love in the Amazon – then became a table in New York

Dead at 53, H.s. left behind countless children and thousands of friends who were woven into her warm and welcoming life

Jaqueline Sordi

14 nov 2023

The short-billed honeycreeper is a restless creature. A quick-winged, thin-legged bird, he has the peculiar habit of dipping his head toward the branches to extract nectar—one of his primary food sources—from the base of the flower. Whenever he saw H.s. in the forest, a bright dot in the green blanket of the Amazon, he knew he could take it easy. With vibrant yellow, funnel-shaped flowers, like miniature trumpets, H.s. stood at an impressive 23 meters. For years, she had been a celebrated elder among the region’s insects and birds. The creatures know that summers in the Amazon, when the rain dies down, food grows scarce, and many of the trees have to conserve energy to survive, are when ipes like to show off their dazzling blooms. Their flowers provide shelter, food, and refuge for many species. It was during one of these scalding hot summers, as the young H.s. was experiencing her first bloom, that her friendship with Short-billed honeycreeper began.

When the bird first set eyes on the ipe tree, unsure why he was so drawn to that splashy, brightly colored creature, he noticed something odd: an intense, varied commotion in the branches. Parakeets, hummingbirds, and bees zipped and zoomed around the canopy, producing a strange, chaotic symphony.

After cautiously approaching, Short-billed honeycreeper breathed a sigh of relief: even though the space was crowded, there was room for one more. He perched on one of the branches. His interest piqued, he decided to sit and watch the activity around him. Inside the handsome flowers were small, reddish stripes. He gazed at the flurry of insects coming and going and assumed H.s. had carefully drawn those small landing strips. He was delighted. Those lines pointed toward the nectar, the coveted, sugary liquid nestled in the base of the flowers. Dozens of mangavas, large, black bumblebees, marched into the small yellow trumpets in lockstep, only to buzz off soon after, satisfied. Short-billed honeycreeper was no fool and immediately followed suit.

H.s. got her welcoming nature from her family

Written into the tree’s DNA were millennia of understanding that her interactions with the world were essential to her survival and well-being. Before H.s. was even born, she already knew that she would have to get along with the wind in order to become life. When her mother scattered her in the air as a seed—a small, winged grain—she let the wind show her the best place to fall and put down roots. Settled into the deep, moist soil in a corner of the Amazon, she began spreading out like a person stretching their arms on a quiet, sunny morning. She sprouted upwards as stem and leaves and reached down to the earth as roots. It was in this narrow, lightless place that H.s. forged her first relationships.

As she made herself at home in the subsoil, she was surprised by the slow approach of fungi and bacteria gradually entwining with her roots. They exchanged nutrients with H.s. while introducing her to a complex web of roots, fungi, and bacteria that silently (to the untrained ear) connect trees and plants to one another. Curious, H.s. did not fight their approach and let herself slowly be entangled by an intricate web made up of thousands of other forest beings. In it, she learned one of the many ways of communicating with the life around her. Through this network, which had evolved over millennia, she received signals from other trees warning her of imminent danger, and notified others or was herself notified about periods of scarcity or plenty.

The trees looked after each other. Together, they grew stronger

Things were a bit more complex above soil. At first, H.s. had mixed feelings about the sun. She liked the warmth and listed toward it. At the same time, she didn’t know what to do with so much heat, which could be at turns cozy or blistering. Her mother had known this would happen, and with the care that can only be given by those who create life, left a small reserve of energy stored in H.s.’s seed so that she could mature unencumbered.

It was a while before H.s. was able to make sense of her complex body. Then, just as she was about to turn five months old, a small revolution took place: her roots informed her that she could draw water and mineral salts from the soil and send them up to her leaves, which would in turn absorb sunlight and turn it all into glucose. H.s. gained her independence. She started producing her own energy. First she discovered photosynthesis. Then she discovered herself as a tree. So began the first major stage of her life cycle. H.s. started dictating her own growth rhythm, generating more and more wide, jagged leaves, and thickening her firm but malleable trunk. She became a mature being.

Soon enough, she caught the attention of the small ants circulating in the area. At first the group, in the Camponotus genus, frightened H.s. Small and dark, they had long, pointed antennae. They came in the hundreds, then the thousands. Resolute, they climbed the trunk to the branches and, finally, posted themselves on the leaves. They noticed small glands, extrafloral nectaries that secrete a delicious sugary substance. H.s. absently offered this flavorful banquet to the small creatures, which was unusual for trees in that region. The ants ate, then filed back down without hurting H.s., leaving behind only a curious sensation.

A while later, after several of these visits, the tree understood that the sugar in her leaves was another thing she’d inherited from past generations. Throughout time, in order to live in the forest, her parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents had developed a nectar source outside the flowers that could attract ants and spiders who in turn scared off predators that might harm the trees’ leaves.

H.s. felt protected by those small creatures. Inspired by them, she had the urge to look after her other forest companions. First, she grew out her canopy so that it was wider and denser, offering up a safe place for travelers to perch and take shelter. The robust capuchin monkeys who every so often came through the region immediately took interest. They stopped by to entertain H.s. with rehearsed choreographies. Powered by their tails, they leaped from branch to branch, and also used them to sit and rest. Confident and excited, the tree firmed up her trunk a little more so ferns, orchids, and bromeliads could safely flourish on her warm body, lending a touch of color and finesse to the typical brown gradations of her bark.

It was like this for a while, summer after summer. Until one day, just as she was about to turn four years old and a dry spell was nearing the rainforest, H.s. felt an unusual sensation, a kind of internal simmering that coursed through her vessels like dopamine through veins (ah, hormones). She was poised for another revolution: maturity. Internal and external factors (temperature and humidity) indicated she had reached reproductive age.

It was time for her to make children of her own and release them into the wind currents

At the time, H.s. suspected she would need a plan to advertise her sexuality amid the forest’s many distractions. So she started by undressing, letting all her leaves drop to the ground. Her naked branches did not go unnoticed. The anthill went into a tizzy: “Did you see how different H.s. looks? Do you think that means our relationship is over?” the ants asked one another. They soon realized this was not the case. The leaves would come back. Greener, more handsome, and juicier. Ready to welcome them with a banquet of nectar, year after year. It was only a matter of time.

But first, H.s. had to preen herself. Until then, her shape and color had washed her out in the middle of the forest. It was time to shine. The same branches that had once been dotted in jagged green leaves now blossomed into bright petals that formed carefully drawn chalices. In a matter of days, her canopy was taken over by golden yellow clusters that shielded pubescent ovaries and could catch the eye of creatures flying in the distance, such as Short-billed honeycreeper. H.s. knew that in order to complete that important stage of her life, she would have to attract and enthrall him as well as many other birds and insects. She knew they were the only ones who could take the pollen dusting the tops of the flowers to the ovules at their base. Without it, fertilization could not be completed. The bright yellow of the flowers wasn’t enough to seduce them. Which is why there was another offering at the base of the flower: a further banquet of nectar.

Her plan was a success, and for the 15 days of H.s.’s first bloom, she was at the center of an animated, energetic period of intense get-togethers. The mixture of rhythms occasionally threw her off: the different frequencies of wingbeats were at times in tune and at times out of tune with the birds’ high-pitched song. Besides bumblebees and hummingbirds, there were also parakeets and red-rumped caciques, small, blue-eyed black birds with yellow beaks. A festival of colors in search of flavorful nectar.

While some respected the path drawn by the tree—red stripes that signaled the route to the feast and consequent fertilization—others, like the blue-gray tanager, were not so patient. They ignored the suggested itinerary, sinking their beaks into the base of the flower and piercing it to steal the sugar. There were also those who cared exclusively for the petals, like the flat-nosed and intensely furred howler monkeys who took up residence on the branches alongside the many other winged creatures, finding there not only food but companionship and protection throughout those fervent weeks.

Following this period of agitation, H.s. felt she should focus her energy on developing the embryos. All that effort shouldn’t come to nothing. For this, she needed peace and focus. Her flowers wilted to discourage further visitors, and she turned her attention to the development of her long, dry fruit. Shaped like runner beans, their thick, bitter pods shielded hundreds of seeds. They were designed this way in order to give the seeds time to mature before setting off into the world. But despite this protection, some were waylaid by parrots whose powerful beaks could break through the casing. H.s. didn’t mind. She knew the majority of her seeds would be safe until they were scattered in the wind. And it was so.

The whole process lasted three months and provided H.s. not only with new experiences but also with lessons she carried with her forever. The uneasiness of her first years, when she had to learn to read the forest while understanding herself as a tree, slowly turned to peace and quiet. She grew wise and grasped the cyclical dimension of her existence. And so, little by little, H.s. began to bring back her leaves, resuming old friendships, and strengthening the ties that were formed with every new bloom.

Various bird species, such as Short-billed honeycreeper, began making annual visits to H.s., safe in the knowledge that every early summer, a welcoming, cozy, nurturing body would greet them. They hoped for a long, loyal friendship. After all, they knew ipe trees could live up to 100 years in that forest. What none of them had imagined was that another creature had long set its sights on H.s.: . A fearful species that failed time and again to understand the value of life, it had used the same strategy as Short-billed honeycreeper—flying above the forest to locate the ipe’s vibrant flowers—to map the trees and plan its next path of destruction.

Unlike the other animals, the commodity-man sought not comfort but money

Neither H.s. nor her visitors saw the danger slouching in that sweltering August morning, when the tree was in her 53rd year. It all happened so fast. Short-billed honeycreeper was flitting toward the tree, content to be reunited once again with H.s., when a thundering noise knocked him off balance.

Forced to touch down, he felt the earth quake beneath his thin legs. He tottered and fell. With his head on the ground and his feet in the air, he saw heavy, sharp-toothed machines trundle toward H.s. and slice into her base. He saw her sap spill down her trunk onto the soil. Cowed, he watched the terrified fleeing of the birds who were accustomed to rehearsing their choreographies around H.s.’s canopy. He was blinded by the tree’s sudden fall, which opened a clearing in the dense rainforest. He turned his attention to the grudging untangling of the fungi, who quickly realized life had been snuffed out there.

H.s., an ipe tree whom humans refer to as Handroanthus serratifolius (the name that inspired the initials used in this vivituary) was killed by human greed. She left behind countless children and friends with whom she was woven together throughout her warm and welcoming life. They now keep her memory alive.