Trees are just big #plants. Plants that have gotten stronger and then bigger. Plants that always produce chemicals enable signalling with other plants.
Plants also produce chemicals that support the companion animals that live amongst them. Chemicals that provide energy as well as the building blocks for life.
Some plants produce chemicals that relax animals to keep them close. The animals often protect the plants from foraging animals in return. Everyone wins.
The plants you see today evolved from plants that came out of the oceans and adapted to growth on land. This happened 489 million years ago.
The first four-legged animals on land appeared some 250 million years ago. The plants had been busy for a while and the animals evolved around the trees, plants and algae, making use of their chemicals where they could.
For the 250 million years since, plants and their companion animals have been #evolving, steadily changing, together. The plant chemicals all have a function for the plant, for other plants and for their companion animals close by.
Nothing has #evolved by chance. Everything has a role important enough, strong enough, that the next generation produced the same chemicals. Anything unimportant changed.
One of the frustrations of many #biochemists who study the chemical pathways of life is that the companies that pay them money ask them to produce synthetic chemicals that mimic plant chemicals. They do this because synthetic chemicals can be patented and then sold for vast profits. Yet these biochemists know that often plant chemicals work synergistically with other plant chemicals to create an “cloud effect” on the body which is often massively more effective, more nurturing, and less toxic.
Plant chemicals just work better. They work better for the plant, for other plants, for their companion animals of the last 250 million years and for the humans that turned up during the last 6 million years - or last 6 days.