Name: 樹木比我們想像的還要瘋狂！🌳😲 (Trees Are Even More Crazy Than We Thought)
Uploaded: 2026-01-07T17:22:34.000Z
Duration: 12 min 1 s

程度副詞

We've just reached 25 million subscribers.

A huge thank you to each and every one of you.

To celebrate, our old friend Midas created a limited edition Golden Duck pin, now available on the shop.

為了慶祝，我們的好朋友 Midas 製作了限量版的金鴨徽章，現在可以在商店買到囉。

其中一個和其他的有點不一樣。

Trees are the heaviest and largest living things on Earth, with the most massive tree weighing almost 2,000 tons, as much as 10 blue whales.

樹木是地球上最重、最大的生物，其中最龐大的樹木重達近 2000 噸，相當於 10 頭藍鯨。

But instead of floating weightlessly in the Ocean, it reaches 25 stories into the sky, held in place by surprisingly shallow roots.

但它不是在海洋中無重力地漂浮，而是直衝 25 層樓高，靠著令人驚訝的淺層根系固定住。

You'd think trees grow from the ground because, well, they're made of stuff and there's stuff in the ground.

你可能會想，樹木是從地上長出來的，因為，嗯，它們是由東西組成的，而地上也有東西。

But if something so massive and huge ate something down below, it would have to leave holes.

但如果這麼龐大巨大的東西從下方吃東西，就會留下空洞。

Instead, trees are growing by literally eating thin air.

相反地，樹木是透過字面上的「吃空氣」來生長。

But this is only half of the story, because down in the ground, roots are mining rocks in ways weirder than you can imagine.

但這只是故事的一半，因為在地底下，樹根正在以你無法想像的奇特方式開採岩石。

How to eat air to grow huge Carbon is the most valuable material for living things.

如何吃空氣長大？碳是生物最有價值的物質。

A chemical multi tool you can make almost everything from, and

一個化學萬用工具，幾乎什麼都能做，而且

a good amount of it just floats around in the air and the oceans.

有相當多的碳就漂浮在空氣和海洋中。

What makes plants so incredibly successful is that over a billion years ago, their ancestors became better than any other living thing at harvesting carbon.

植物之所以如此成功，是因為超過十億年前，牠們的祖先比其他任何生物都更擅長擷取碳。

Today, plants make up 80% of the biomass on Earth and are the basis for all complex life.

如今，生質佔地球總生質的 80%，並且是所有複雜生命的基礎。

All animals eat either plants or animals that eat plants to get the carbon they need.

所有動物都要嘛吃植物，要嘛吃吃植物的動物，來獲取牠們所需的碳。

Trees are an especially ingenious way plants found to harvest massive amounts of carbon.

樹木是植物找到的一種特別巧妙的方式，來擷取大量的碳。

Trees are big and heavy, so they need a lot of material.

樹木又大又重，所以牠們需要很多材料。

But the atmosphere is only about 0.04% CO2,425 CO2 molecules per million molecules in the air.

但大氣中只有大約 0.04% 是 CO2，也就是每百萬個空氣分子中有 425 個 CO2 分子。

To get a single ton of carbon, the tree has to process 6,000 tons or 5 million cubic meters of air.

要獲取一噸碳，樹木必須處理 6,000 噸空氣，也就是 500 萬立方公尺的空氣。

So trees developed sophisticated biological industrial megalopolises.

所以樹木發展出了複雜的生物工業巨城。

Their crowns a huge industrial park network made from dozens of branches, sub branches and hundreds of thousands of twigs that can sense the sun and shape the tree to grow towards it in slow motion.

牠們的樹冠是一個巨大的工業園區網絡，由數十根樹枝、次級樹枝和數十萬根細枝組成，能夠感知陽光並塑造樹木朝向陽光緩慢生長。

牠們可以承載高達一百萬片葉子。

The industrial parks where a tree eats and builds, consuming extreme amounts of resources from the air and fed by the roots down below, while vomiting waste and changing the climate around them.

樹木在這些工業園區裡進食和建造，消耗來自空氣的極大量資源，並由下方的根部供應，同時排出廢物並改變周圍的氣候。

It's made from hundreds of millions of factory cells and optimized to have as much surface area and be as thin as possible to harvest sunlight while your skin is Hundreds of cells thick, a leaf can be just 10 cells top to bottom.

它由數億個工廠細胞組成，並經過優化，表面積盡可能大且盡可能薄，以便收集陽光，而您的皮膚有數百層細胞那麼厚，一片葉子從頂到底可能只有 10 層細胞。

On their top, leaves have only a single ultra thin layer of protective transparent skin cells that let light through and keep water in.

在葉子的頂部，只有一層超薄的保護性透明表皮細胞，能讓光線穿透並保持水分。

Below them are layers of factory cells filled to the brink with chloroplasts that do the actual work.

在它們下方是充滿葉綠體的工廠細胞層，葉綠體負責實際的工作。

Beneath them, a spongy layer of loose cells enables gases to travel around.

在它們下方，一層疏鬆的海綿狀細胞層讓氣體能夠四處流通。

The whole leaf is traversed by a network of vein like superhighways that carry sugars back down and bring water and minerals up from the roots.

整片葉子由像高速公路一樣的網絡貫穿，將糖分運送下來，並將水分和礦物質從根部帶上來。

At the bottom is another protective layer of cells interrupted by hundreds of thousands of stomata, tiny mouths opened and closed by two guard cells that look a bit like lips.

在底部是另一層保護性細胞，上面有數十萬個氣孔，這些氣孔是兩個像嘴脣一樣的保衛細胞打開和關閉的微小開口。

Each day, an adult tree pulls up dozens of liters of water all the way from its roots in the ground to these veins, where about 95% of it is sweated out through hundreds of billions of these tiny mouths.

每天，一棵成年的樹會將數十公升的水從地下的根部一直吸收到這些葉脈，其中約 95% 的水分會透過數千億個這樣微小的氣孔蒸發散失。

This cools the leaf factories, which need to stay in direct sunlight as long as possible.

這能為葉子工廠降溫，它們需要盡可能長時間地待在陽光直射下。

And the air around the tree, and it surrounds the tree with an invisible mist.

樹木周圍的空氣，並讓樹木周圍環繞著一層看不見的薄霧。

The vapor from a forest of billions of trees can seed clouds and create rain.

數十億棵樹組成的森林蒸發的水氣，可以形成雲並降雨。

Without the trees, the Amazon would be a sad, dry shrubland or desert.

沒有了樹木，亞馬遜就會變成一片悲傷、乾旱的灌木叢或沙漠。

The other 5% of the water is used to keep the cells al and to power the factories where the magic happens.

另外 5% 的水分則用來保持細胞涼爽，並為發生奇蹟的工廠提供動力。

We're not going to explain the details here, but

in a nutshell, with the energy from the sun, water molecules are split into hydrogen and oxygen.

簡單來說，在陽光能量的幫助下，水分子會分解成氫和氧。

The oxygen is ejected while the Leftover hydrogen and CO2 are forged and reduced into glucose, a simple sugar that's both battery and building block, and

氧氣會被排出，而剩餘的氫和 CO2 會被鍛造並還原成葡萄糖，這是一種簡單的糖，既是電池也是建材，而且

For most animals, oxygen is not just garbage to the tree, though.

不過，對大多數動物來說，氧氣不只是樹木的廢物。

To actually use the energy stored in the glucose, the tree has to burn the sugar, just like we humans do with cellular respiration.

樹木要真正利用儲存在葡萄糖裡的能量，就像我們人類進行細胞呼吸一樣，也需要燃燒這些糖分。

So all living cells in the tree suck in oxygen through the tiny leaf mouths, cracks in the bark, and

所以樹裡所有活的細胞，都會透過葉片上的小氣孔、樹皮的裂縫，

even root tips, tapping into tiny air pockets hidden in the soil.

甚至連根尖，吸入氧氣，利用藏在土壤裡的小小空氣袋。

This respiration runs non stop, and especially at night, when the leaf factories stop production.

這個呼吸作用是持續不斷的，尤其在晚上，當葉片的工廠停止生產時。

Trees actually reabsorb some of the oxygen they produce.

樹木其實會重新吸收一部分牠們產生的氧氣。

And almost all of the rest gets used up by microbes and everything else breathing nearby.

而剩下的幾乎全都被附近的微生物和其他會呼吸的東西消耗掉了。

Most of the world's free oxygen doesn't come from trees, but from algae and cyanobacteria in the oceans.

世界上大部分的遊離氧氣並非來自樹木，而是來自海洋裡的藻類和藍綠菌。

But this is only half of the story, because the even more insane parts of trees are the second invisible crown, the underground empire of the roots.

不過這只是故事的一半，因為樹木更令人驚豔的部分是第二個看不見的皇冠，也就是地下根系的帝國。

Most of the water A tree needs comes from rainfall, which soaks mainly into the upper layers of soil.

樹木所需的大部分水分來自雨水，這些雨水主要滲入土壤的上層。

Annoyingly, for trees, their crowns are big umbrellas, so their roots need to spread out far and wide towards the side.

令人頭痛的是，對樹木來說，牠們的樹冠就像大傘一樣，所以根系需要往旁邊盡量地、廣泛地伸展。

About 50% of their roots are packed into the top 25cm of soil.

大約有 50% 的根系都集中在土壤最上面的 25 公分。

They're not a mirror image of the crown, but a dense, tangled mat deeply intermingled with their neighbors.

牠們不像樹冠那樣是個鏡像，而是一片密集、糾結的網，與鄰居們深深地交織在一起。

Only if it's very dry do roots grow straight down to tap.

只有在非常乾燥的時候，根系才會筆直地往下長來尋找水源。

Hidden water reserves, in extreme cases, more than 20 storeys deep.

隱藏的水源儲備，在極端情況下，深度可達 20 層樓以上。

大部分的根系可以長到 7 公尺深。

But roots have a far more complex job than just catching water.

不過，根系的工作可不只是吸收水分這麼簡單。

Just like you can't build a city from only bricks and steel, trees also need some rare materials.

就像你無法只用磚塊和鋼筋蓋一座城市一樣，樹木也需要一些稀有的材料。

Phosphorus to build DNA, nitrogen for proteins and many more.

像是構成 DNA 的磷，以及構成蛋白質的氮，還有更多更多。

And all of these are stealthily buried underground.

而這些東西都偷偷地埋藏在地下。

Rocks, dry patches, nutrients and arrival routes are all scattered unpredictably and chaotically.

岩石、乾旱區、養分和抵達路線都雜亂無章地散佈著。

To navigate this shifting maze, roots evolved a specialized sensor at their very the root cap.

為了在這個變動的迷宮中導航，根系在根冠處演化出了特殊的感應器。

Each cap is filled with gravity sensing cells in which tiny, dense particles sink, like pebbles settling in a jar of water.

每個根冠都充滿了能感應重力的細胞，裡面微小、密集的粒子會沉降，就像鵝卵石沉入裝滿水的罐子裡一樣。

So the root always knows which way is down.

所以根系總是知道哪個方向是下方。

As it pushes forward, specialized cells detect moisture, temperature, chemical gradients and the smallest vibrations from water.

當它向前推進時，特化的細胞會偵測到水分、溫度、化學梯度以及來自水源的最小震動。

This raw data flows into the root's command center, just behind the tip, where cells produce electrical pulses and move transmitter chemicals around.

這些原始數據會流向根尖後方的指揮中心，那裡的細胞會產生電脈衝並傳遞化學物質。

Signals from the soil are processed, interpreted and turned into decisions about where to grow.

來自土壤的訊號會被處理、解讀，並轉化成生長的決策。

A single tree has hundreds of thousands of these command centers, and

一棵樹有數十萬個這樣的指揮中心，

they seem to share information with each other.

而且牠們似乎會互相分享資訊。

Once a root has chosen a path, fuzzy little drinking straws called root hairs, loaded with enzymes and transport proteins, begin soaking up water and dissolved minerals.

一旦根系選定了路徑，那些毛茸茸的小吸管，也就是根毛，就會充滿酵素和運輸蛋白，開始吸收水分和溶解的礦物質。

But many essential nutrients are locked away in solid rock, so roots evolved to move into the finest cracks.

但許多必需的養分都鎖在堅硬的岩石裡，所以根系演化出鑽進最細微裂縫的能力。

Once in, they fill with water and swell like tiny hydraulic jacks, creating enough pressure to break even the hardest rock.

一旦鑽進去，牠們會充滿水分並像微小的液壓千斤頂一樣膨脹，產生足夠的壓力來撐開最堅硬的岩石。

Next, they release a mix of acids that seep into the fractures and dissolve the bonds that hold nutrients in place.

接著，牠們會釋放混合酸，滲入裂縫並溶解將養分固定住的鍵結。

Claw like molecules, grab them and pull them in before they can slip away.

像爪子一樣的分子會抓住它們，在它們溜走之前將它們拉進來。

Even with all these tools, to really thrive, the tree needs allies.

即使有所有這些工具，要真正茁壯成長，樹木需要盟友。

The underground networks of fungi can stretch for kilometers.

真菌的地下網絡可以延伸數公里。

They're so small that they can go where roots can't, slipping between grains of soil to reach distant pockets of nutrients.

牠們非常微小，能深入根部無法到達的地方，穿梭於土壤顆粒之間，觸及遙遠的養分庫。

So hundreds of millions of years ago, roots and fungi formed a trade alliance.

所以，數億年前，樹根和真菌建立了一種貿易聯盟。

The trees provide a cut of the sugars they produce far up in the sky and fungi collect and give them nutrients and water in return.

樹木會提供牠們在高空中製造的糖分，而真菌則回報以養分和水分。

Some fungi grow directly into the root cells, building tiny trade posts where sugars and minerals change hands.

有些真菌會直接長進樹根細胞裡，建立小型的貿易站，交換糖分和礦物質。

Others wrap themselves around root tips, weaving between their outer layers, insulating delicate tissues and protecting them against microorganisms.

有些則會纏繞在根尖周圍，編織在牠們的外層之間，保護脆弱的組織，抵禦微生物。

Today, there are thousands of fungal tree ally species, each with its own specialities.

如今，有數千種真菌與樹木結盟，各有專長。

Some only partner with specific tree species, while others are happy to work with almost anyone.

有些只與特定樹種合作，有些則樂意與幾乎所有樹木合作。

These connections often knit the roots of many trees together into vast underground networks.

這些連結經常將許多樹木的根系編織成龐大的地下網絡。