You would think that we know most everything there is to be known about trees. We don’t, and as Alan Jacobs recounts in his short essay, “The Life of Trees,” most of what we do know is of recent vintage. He notes that when two great storms rolled across Britain in 1987 and 1990, uprooting thousands of old trees, botanists’ assumptions about the long taproots that anchored these trees in the ground were also uprooted. In fact, after being pitched indecorously bottoms up, they found that these trees didn’t have taproots at all but roots that, while extending only two feet down, stretched horizontally for vast distances.

Same with the crowns of our tallest trees. One scientist climbed into the canopies, discovering a rich and complex ecosystem and, not only that, flying squirrels so unfamiliar with human beings that they allowed scientists to scratch their heads. The tops of the tallest redwoods were discovered to be so dense and interlocking that “you could put snowshoes on and throw a Frisbee around.” All of which seems decidedly unscientific and fun. Oh, what we don’t know.

This reminds me once again how little I know about some of my closest neighbors, that is, the trees in my backyard. I don’t even know all their names, even though I look at them all the time. Maybe if I took the time to know them, to learn their names and particular characteristics, I would appreciate them more, pay attention to them more, understand when they are injured, have gratitude for the shade they provide and all the other unseen contributions they make to my life. Maybe I would stop thinking about myself all the time and more about others who are worth knowing and, even when known, are still full of mystery.

I didn’t know this: Cows, says Jacobs, “prefer tree leaves to almost any other food, but just can’t reach them. Sad, really.” No, funny, to think about a cow trying to reach a tree leaf. But I suppose we can’t quite grasp what we reach for either, but still we hope, wonder, and wait, among neighbors, among trees.