IN MIDDLE-EARTH, the setting for The Lord of the Rings, there live the Ents —treelike creatures of great antiquity who grow in forested groups and communicate with each other ever so slowly. Scientists here in the real world have recently discovered that our trees are rather Ent-like socially and they may even have heartbeats.
Up until 2017, scientists thought that water moved from the soil to the treetops by osmosis, but now they’ve discovered that trees are pumping water from the roots to the leaves the way our hearts pump blood
