Lightning strikes kill millions of trees each year — but it turns out that some large tropical trees can not only survive a strike, but also benefit from its effects, according to a recent study.
The lightning's immense power cleanses these trees of parasitic vines. It also zaps trees nearby, reducing competition. One tree called Dipteryx oleifera, a towering presence in Panama's forests, is particularly adept at thriving after enduring events that are deadly to most other trees.
"I think to our whole team, it still feels remarkable that this tree can get exposed to 30,000 amps of current and be OK. And not just OK: have almost no damage at all, while having all these additional benefits," Evan Gora, an author of the study published in the journal New Phytologist, tells NPR.
"It still almost feels implausible — if we didn't have an enormous amount of data showing a lot of ways that it actually seems to be benefiting," he adds.
Gora is a forest ecologist working with the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in New York and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.
We asked Gora how the tree can withstand shocking events — and whether that might hold lessons for the rest of us.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
NPR: What made you look into whether some trees might survive a lightning strike?
We started a project tracking lightning strikes 10 years ago. Your average lightning strike lasts about a millisecond. Over a period of weeks after that, you can start seeing a phenomenon we've identified — sort of a diagnostic called 'flashover damage.'
Basically, lightning attaches to a tree crown and then it flows outward and jumps out from its branches and trunk to the neighbors, sort of like spider webs through the canopy, and electrocutes normally 23 trees on average, killing about a quarter of them.
We did some early work showing lightning is this major driver of large tree death. But we had some trees that were surviving. I think the first tree we saw that survived a direct lightning strike was a Dipteryx oleifera in 2015, 2016. That tree survived, [but] the [parasitic] woody vines, lianas, in its crown died, and I think 16 neighbors died.
And over years, we're consistently starting to see this species, when it's struck, it's not just surviving, it has no damage at all. So we had a hint.
Then we had an event where lightning attached to one of these Dipteryx oleifera and electrocuted 116 neighbors. [It] ends up killing 57 of them. That event sort of crystallized [that] this is an incredible amount of damage, we need to start looking at this more.
What is it about these trees that allows them to emerge unscathed from being hit by lightning?
We don't know for sure. We think there are probably multiple mechanisms by which a tree could survive lightning. But one of them that seems particularly promising is that more electrically conductive trees should be more likely to survive because [for each] unit of electric current that flows through a tree — it'll be heated less if it's more conductive.
We have sort of a smoking gun that it could be these electrical properties, but we need to test that more.
So the energy from lightning is just being transferred? Is the tree saying, 'I'm going to disperse this instead of absorbing this energy on my own?'
Effectively, yeah. If you thought about this as like, wires in your house — if you have a brand new wire of sufficient gauge, it's not going to heat up at all [when a current runs through it].
But if you have a really old lamp or something that has these old little brittle wires, it's going to get hot. And that heat is basically energy being dissipated, because it's more resistant to the electric current. So you produce more energetic heating if you're more resistant.
This tree might have evolved to be struck more often, or at least not able to be struck less. It's 30% taller than the allometric average, and its crown area is 50% bigger. So they're this super extreme in terms of their architecture, in the two ways that make you likely to be struck by lightning.
How long do these large trees live in the forest?
We can't do tree ring dating in tropical forests because they don't make consistent growth rings. My guess would be many of these individuals are hundreds, or maybe even more than 1,000 years old.
It's fascinating being around it and being like, this is probably the 10th lightning strike this tree has had. We estimate it's five [strikes] on average. But, you know, some of them obviously have a ton.
Dipteryx oleifera is remarkable. If you work in a forest where it is for a week, you'll know what it is because it has these giant diameters, these huge buttresses. It extends way up into the canopy. So, just a very charismatic tree. But it doesn't handle shade well.
If lianas can climb all the way up it and lay their leaves on top, that's not very good for that tree. This tree is getting repeatedly struck by lightning over its lifetime, clearing up those lianas and removing the neighbors that are sort of getting too close for comfort.
I'm curious about the response you've gotten to this research.
People have been really positive and excited. We've had a couple of people specifically reference, you know, it's a stressful time right now and [it's] nice to have an analogy of surviving the seemingly unsurvivable.
Is there anything about this tree that people might try to emulate?
I'm not sure how you'd replicate this tree. Maybe just draw inspiration from it — that seemingly the hardest things can turn into good things.
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