RE: Trees
ORIGINAL: Energylz
I can see the better strength thing, but that still doesn't explain why some go clockwise and some anti-clockwise.
Yes. An expert on the subject of trees would perhaps have more insight, but as to genetics, or the idea that the environment might make a tree grow in one spiral direction or another, I'd wonder, 'What of other trees of the same type?' In other words, if oak trees are generally not spiral, but then we come across one which is extremely spiral, you do have to ask Why? It can't be in the DNA unless it happens to them all, or some have a different DNA.
I also don't necessarily see how strength is improved since most trees are not spiral and that's the basic design. If spirals were so important for strength, probably most trees would spiral by now, from evolution. They don't.
I think I know the kind of spiral tree you, Giles, mean. It's dramatically spiral, right? I'm thinking of trees with many branches coming right out at all levels, which also twist and spiral around. It does indeed look as if the whole tree has grown within a localised area which has some kind of energetic spiral built-in, so that any tree growing there might spiral, on that spot. (Which could be scientifically tested!) So I do wonder about a localised 'forcefield' such as dowsers speak of.
'Little' mysteries such as this, and I can think of others, may appear peripheral to important things, like little mental teasers - but I don't believe they are. Rather, they might well be aspects of the unseen realities hard science doesn't recognise, aspects of Laws outside of the known Laws of science. Invisible forcefields which cause trees to twist, whether caused by ley lines, underground streams, or whatever, would certainly be an insight into the unseen that science doesn't yet possess. In other words, such mysteries may be windows into whole new aspects of so-far unrecognised sciences.
V