Water and Light and Air (A Tree Song)

[bnewman]

Plants of course depend on nutrients in the soil, but the bulk of the matter that makes up a plant, and especially a tree, is just this: water and air, spun together with light.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman
after "A Tree Song" by Rudyard Kipling
set to music by Peter Bellamy

listen to this song

/: Am - -G (Am/E) / - GAm G Am :/

 

Of all the trees in all the woods

That grow so tall and fair

Stout be the stem, but there's nothing to them

But water and light and air

 

Water and light and air (it's true!)

Botany students beware

As Earth be good, there's nothing to wood

But water and light and air

 

H2O will fall and flow

And soak into the thirsty roots

And rise and rise, clear up to the skies

Through the xylem and leaves and shoots

But what sucks water, meter on meter

Up from the forest floor?

An impossible straw, the capillary draw

Of uncountable tiny pores

 

Water and light and air (it's true!)

Botany students beware

As Earth be good, there's nothing to wood

But water and light and air

 

CO2 from me and you

And every animal's lung

Is fixed today in the very same way

As when life on the land was young

And the carbon fixed from our breath is mixed

With the breath of all that breathes

Taken up to feed the unquenchable need

Of all life that bears green leaves

 

Water and light and air (it's true!)

Botany students beware

As Earth be good, there's nothing to wood

But water and light and air

 

Chlorophyll will drink her fill

Whenever the Sun be seen

She drinks the red and she drinks the blue

And gives back a lovely green

From the light she drinks, she takes and links

CO2 and H2O

And the sugar that's spun by the light of the Sun

Is in all of the wood we know

 

Water and light and air (it's true!)

Botany students beware

As Earth be good, there's nothing to wood

But water and light and air