When we got this assignment, we were told that it had to be about plant ecology and one of the topics that are in the handout everyone said the Lorax and Wall-E but I wanted to look for something different. I had drawn blank thinking about what film to choose because most of the documentaries that I see are about animals (since those are usually the most popular), so I did some research on google of plant ecology documentaries. I stumbled on a website called Top Documentary Films and found that there is a category of nature. Then I just started reading the description of them to see which one sounded interesting.
The film that I almost choose for my film project is a documentary called The Secret of the Methuselah. I particularly liked this documentary because it was different than the rest. Most documentaries are narrated by one person and describe the species and what they are doing in their environment. They would also say how they interact with other species and show clips of them in their natural habitat. While I do like those types of documentaries (usually narrated by David Attenborough) I wanted something different that would still be very educational, and I would learn new things.
The particular thing about this documentary is its narration of it. The narration is in the form of poems which the narration is saying to the tree. You would think that they would at least be about the tree, but no he is saying them to this tree. The documentary is about the oldest tree in the world. Also, sometimes there are poems that the tree is saying to all of us.
One of the many new things that I learned is that by observing the cross-section of a trunk, we can examine the climates of past years. This is how we can date tree rings to measure the climate. Similarly, how we can examine the history by looking at the soil horizon of a hill or a mountain.
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 