Scientists Intrigued by Tree That Harnesses Electricity to Kill Its Enemies

For trees, lightning strikes are the great leveller. Stick your neck out by growing taller than the rest, and you risk getting zapped into oblivion. Hundreds of millions of trees suffer this fate every year. But the opposite appears to be the case for the towering tonka bean tree (Dipteryx oleifera), a native of the rainforests of Panama that grows up to 130 feet tall and lives for hundreds of years. Lightning is a weapon in its arsenal, and it wields it masterfully. When an opportune lightning strike comes, the tonka tree survives unscathed — while clinging-on parasites and its competing neighbors are vanquished, according to a recent study published in the journal New Phytologist. "We started doing this work 10 years ago, and it became really apparent that lightning kills a lot of trees, especially a lot of very big trees," lead author Evan Gora, a forest ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, told Live Science. "But Dipteryx oleifera consistently showed no damage." ... Read full article.