“And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth, and it was so” (Genesis1:11).
With these words, God brought into existence the plants upon the earth. These organisms are critical for the existence of life on this planet. They capture sunlight in a process called photosynthesis and convert it to sugar for animals’ use. They also, as a byproduct of this marvelous process, make oxygen, also necessary for our existence. These processes occur on trees in structures called leaves. Besides these, plants do so much for us, providing shade that we can rest under, cleaning our air and absorbing sounds in our busy cities. But upon closer examination of these marvelous designs of creation that we call leaves, we can see so much more of the wisdom of God than is noticed at first glance.
With the spring and summer come storms that blow and tear homes and vegetation alike. How do trees covered with leaves withstand these storms that would seek to tear and uproot? Scientists have discovered that in the very aerodynamics of leaves the evidence of the Creator, who knew exactly what would be necessary to protect the trees during a storm.
The trees must have a good covering of leaves in order to take best advantage of the sunlight hitting them, but this works against the tree in a storm providing resistance that could break the tree. Of course, in the most violent of storms there is no protection for trees. But normal winds of 30-50 mph can be harmful for trees, except that the leaves are engineered to minimize the wind’s affects.
Leaves of trees when tested in a wind tunnel show how God designed them to avoid some of these affects. Any object that is to experience high wind forces is better off if designed with a very streamlined shape. Airplanes, cars, bullet trains and other manmade objects show this design. When God created leaves, he also knew plants would need this ability. When leaves from several trees were tested, they each showed the ability to become more streamlined as wind speeds increased. When wind speed increases, single leaves begin to form cones that reduce the drag that the tree is exposed to. This is caused by the architecture of the cells of the leaf and petiole. The tulip, oak and apple leaves, each having a long stem, roll up very nicely as wind speeds are increased. The tests done on these leaves as they rolled into a streamlined cone shape showed that the drag was reduced by as much as two thirds over the unrolled leaf.
The compound leaves on trees like black locust and black walnut also show this rolling affect as the leaves form cones to protect the tree from the increasing winds. Leaves such as holly trees with very hard and brittle leaves which are not able to roll into a cone, show a protective affect as they lay flat against one another in increasing winds.
It has also been noted that when a leaf does not perform well in the wind tunnel tests, it is because of some type of damage or flaw in the leaf. If an insect has eaten out areas of a leaf as they do many times, this prevents the leaf from reducing its surface area, and could cause the leaf to be torn from the tree.
God in his infinite wisdom and perfection left nothing to chance with the creation of leaves so that trees can survive the storms of life. The author of Genesis noted by inspiration in chapter 1:31, “And God saw every thing that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” We should be humbled that in the “invisible things of him from the creation of the world” we can know that God IS!
