For our next #weirdlywednesday post, we’re showing evidence of the Atomic Age research of introducing radioisotopes to trees in the hope of studying how individual trees behave physiologically and how their absorption, translocation, and similar metabolic processes work. Field studies were conducted to study pole blight, a disease of western white pine trees, where a scientist would enable a solution consisting of either radioactive calcium or radioactive phosphorus, or both, to be absorbed by the tree, then examine the entire tree from trunk to tip of foliage with a Geiger counter to see where and how fast the radiation had traveled.

Sources

University of Idaho Bulletin, Vol. 50, No. 2, November 1954.