There is a relevant issue in the difference between how the thirteen victims of the storm that struck Bahía Blanca on the afternoon of Saturday, December 16, 2023, were named by the city government and the press, and how the 14,000 fallen trees were referred to. Beyond the exclusive use of the term "victim," it is worth noting this dissimilarity: in one case, the number is exact; in the other, only an approximation—to the point that among the different figures provided (first 10,000, then 12,000, and now even the 14,000 estimate may be revised), the only constant is the use of a round number, similar to how other recent and dramatic events in Argentine history have been described. This resemblance serves as a warning about the severity of the problem. However, in this case, one might suspect that the preference for a round number carries an additional dimension beyond magnitude, because the indeterminacy of the count is emphasized by the generalization of those 14,000 woody-stemmed plants without even acknowledging their specific names: rough pines, eucalyptus, bola acacias, casuarinas, elms, willows, or pepper trees—each of which, moreover, with their irregular canopy volumes, bark markings, or endlessly varied branching, seemed to defy the classifying mania that orders them by genus and species, displaying singular and irreplicable traits.

 

The consequences of witnessing cypresses, elms, and eucalyptus—typically associated with verticality—lying horizontally on sidewalks, streets, and properties for months remain unknown, particularly for the future behavior of the city’s inhabitants. It is not implausible that this disruption, at least for those in their early years, may become a decisive testimony: that which we attempt to name with the noun "nature" has taken on more unstable and threatening features. Perhaps the most jarring image is that of thousands upon thousands of roots exposed to the sun. How can one downplay the impact of the subterranean suddenly emerging into the light? If we accept the Darwinian hypothesis that the arboreal brain is to be found not in the canopy but in the roots—thus inverting the high and low of the human body—there is a chance that the storm unleashed an immense volume of vegetal thought across the length and breadth of the city. Will it be possible to grasp that thought? Will it suffice to press an ear against the bark of an ash tree, to spend hours inquisitively contemplating a pinecone, or to circle a lemon verbena while bringing one’s nose close to its blossoms, recalling the frenetic movements of a bee? Or might it require gently stroking the glossy leaves of a privet? Of course, attempting to linguistically translate this thought is risky—just as it is risky to see in the scattered thousands of roots nothing more than a fleeting scene, waiting for the municipal backhoes and trucks to clear the remnants once and for all, leaving the disaster’s event lurking in oblivion.

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According to experts, a significant percentage of the fallen trees are linked to the presence of hardpan at just 50 centimeters deep, an obstacle that forces roots to curb their centripetal tendency and spread superficially, parallel to the ground. This is why agronomists and forestry engineers, faced with the unsettling sight of roots, reassure themselves by noting their consistent lateral spread. Undoubtedly, the combination of strong winds (some gusts reached 189 km/h) and heavy rains destabilizing the soil proved lethal for specimens with such precarious anchorage. Observing how conifers and eucalyptus developed height and foliage disproportionate to their support, specialists point to an issue of imbalance. Hence, the current proposal to select shorter species—known as "second magnitude"—for the already announced Forest Reconstruction Plan. Yet, walking among hundreds of fallen cypresses measuring six, seven, or even eight meters, it is hard not to wonder what their options were. After all, that excessive height or sprawling foliage, which proved disadvantageous during the storm, primarily signaled—especially for those planted densely in confined spaces—a search for light, light, more light. Did they experience the tension between growing at the risk of imbalance or remaining balanced and dying? It is worth questioning whether engineers, in invoking equilibrium, conceive of a notion of life that excludes its inherent asymmetries and instabilities. A forest plan is never just a forest plan.

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This is also why intervening in the debate over planting native versus exotic species solely from botanical considerations is limiting—without simultaneously addressing issues tied to imperial expansions, geological timeframes, or immigration policies. Reportedly, native species include certain varieties of carob tree, caldén, creole willow, chañar, sombra de toro, espinillo, or cina cina, which evolved over thousands, even millions, of years in this very territory. Their shorter stature and more extensive root systems make them more resistant to the region’s characteristic winds, though the storm—as evidenced by broken branches of centuries-old caldén trees—also affected their physiology. Perhaps the slower growth of native species carries a statement: a bond with one’s territory demands slowness. It is also true that natives evoke nostalgia for the truth of origin—as if there had ever been one. For any territory is but a dynamic of constant mutations, and in this southwestern part of Buenos Aires Province, one such mutation has been, at least over the last two centuries, the invention of a city. To the genetic memory of an espinillo, two centuries may feel like a breeze at dusk; yet it is implausible that some root tip has never detected the PVC of a water pipe—or even tried to spell out, on a metal one, the name of the English company that regulated the service in the early 20th century. There is an event in that encounter between pipe and subtle root tip: the event of the impertinence of approaching a forest matter without distinguishing an economic one, or without noticing how social dimensions have become indistinguishable from the supposedly natural. The same occurs when the branches of a plum tree graze the taut cables of electrical or internet lines, or when the broad, rough leaves of an elm capture licensed particles from the petrochemical industry. It is improbable to know whether each time this happens, something stirs in the sap’s circuitry; less improbable is that it stirs our way of ordering knowledge.

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One of the most relevant aspects of the Forest Reconstruction Plan is the so-called "Neighborhood Participation and Training Program," particularly for what it could mean for the formation of the state—specifically, its bureaucratic capacity to attend to the less scientific, more multiple and diverse knowledge of residents about plants. Because the program should also serve to understand that the bond with a visco acacia goes beyond learning a guide about stakes or regular watering in the first years after planting. It also takes considerable willingness—if not affection or sympathetic feeling—to discern daily the vicissitudes, efforts, solutions, and setbacks of that growing acacia. Regarding the emphasis on stakes, meant to prevent trees from growing crooked or at a 45° angle (another cause engineers cite for the mass falls), it might be timely to consider how to address specimens already predisposed to such inclinations. What to do with the twisted elm? How to accompany the linden that lacked support? Or does the risk of its fall leave only the lethal option of preventive felling? As the constant sound of chainsaws multiplies across the city, so too do the questions. Because, indeed, a Forest Plan is indistinguishable from a governance plan and a way of thinking and making a city. Thus, the measures taken for the palo borracho at 100 Caronti Street—whose branches, heavy with five-petaled white flowers, snapped during the storm’s 40-minute onslaught—could be a first-order political issue.

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The tendency to think substance matters more than relation fosters the idea that losing a tree is just that—the loss of a tree—and not the loss of thousands upon thousands of interactions. One need only imagine what must have happened to the mockingbirds, parakeets, or parrots accustomed to that branch of that eucalyptus at that hour of dusk, who, the day after the storm, flew to that branch of that eucalyptus at that hour of dusk only to find a void or absence that may have made them pause on another perch, wondering if they had lost their sense of direction. Among those thousands of interactions are those shaping the daily lives of the city’s inhabitants. Perhaps the current obsession with surveys could help verify whether citizens’ perceptions shift with the presence (or lack) of urban trees in their neighborhoods—even whether those perceptions change based on the typical species there. For example, a chañar does not evoke the same idea of beauty as a cherry tree, and its daily radiance might contradict even what one learns in an art history course. No, it should not be a stretch to imagine that in a few years, the City Council might debate—with the same emphasis now given to bus fare increases—the optimal spacing for planting a row of ash trees, or which species are most suitable for a public square. These decisions, too, have concrete consequences for collective well-being.

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Their ability to freshen the air, muffle noise, or cool afternoons during the frequent 40°C summer days is less relevant than their suitability for casting doubt on supposed superior intelligence. Because, for example, that pepper tree on the corner is not still. Even on days when not the slightest breeze stirs it, it moves day by day, hour by hour, millisecond by millisecond, in ceaseless transformation. But we lack the tools to detect that this pepper tree is a process exceeding itself—or to notice the reduction of what the eye perceives, for it is underground where activity multiplies through exchanges, constant events of decomposition and composition in which roots and organisms blur, sharing information via codes we cannot begin to fathom. Perhaps one reason certain specimens live in this area for over a hundred or even two hundred years—like the black carob tree that grew a few meters from the train station long before the railway arrived in 1884—is that they understand, in their own way, that our understanding demands a collective learning spanning generations. Though it may be difficult to know what that particular Prosopis nigra has been pondering for over a century, it might be a good exercise to sit beside it on one of the cement benches and trace in its gnarled, nervous branches the reverberations of thousands upon thousands of passing train cars—or, perhaps better, its distrust of any overly linear discernment. Or maybe it is simply about sitting there to detect its perfect indifference.