“O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all…”
Psalm 104:24
Years ago, I got curious about the trees that grow in California and began to observe and learn more about them. I bought tree identifier cards for the Sierra Nevada and the National Geographic pocket guide to the trees of North America. I gathered leaves from the Red Alder, Bigleaf Maple, and California Laurel and grew proficient at identifying California Incense Cedar, Pacific Dogwood, and Douglas Fir trees. I even bought a pack of flash cards to help me identify trees from around the world. Yes, I am a nature nerd!
Many things I observed and learned delighted me. The California Laurel is our source for peppery bay leaves. The Incense Cedar is drought tolerant, has aromatic resins, and is used to make high-quality wooden pencils. The Red Adler was used by indigenous peoples for medicinal purposes and its wood is used for furniture. The Valley Oak is the tree for which Thousand Oaks is named and is in my estimation the most beautiful Oak, with its sinewy limbs and lobed leaves that create a verdant seasonal shade canopy.
And then there are the pine needles. Mostly I used to think of these as a nuisance, as our neighbor three-doors-down has a massive Pine tree that profusely sheds its needles, especially during Santa Ana winds. However, did you know that pine trees grow different numbers of needle clumps (called fascicles) held together by a papery sheath, depending on the tree? The Jeffrey and Ponderosa Pines grow three-needle fascicles, the Lodgepole Pine grows them by twos, and the Sugar Pine grows needles in groups of five. How do they know how to do that?
I suppose you could say that technically, Pine Trees don’t really “count” their needles but simply follow the instructions of their DNA, based on environmental adaptation. But there’s something truly marvelous about this to me—you can identify types of Pine Trees by how many needles they have! And it turns out that the numbers embedded in nature go way beyond mere pine needles. Pine cone spirals, sunflowers seeds, flower petals, and pineapples, all exhibit numerical patterns in their scales, seeds, and petals that correlate with the ratios we also observe in nautilus shells, hurricanes, and even spiral galaxies! May we allow ourselves to become curious and explore these hidden wonders that God has embedded throughout all Creation.
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