Empathizing with Trees: A Rhetorical Analysis of Harriet Rix's "The Genius of Trees..."

Harriet Rix’s 2025 article in The Guardian, “The genius of trees: how forests have shaped humanity, from chocolate cravings to our ability to dream”, argues trees have profoundly influenced the evolutionary course of humanity in a mutually beneficial relationship. In the midst of worldwide environmental crises, Rix emphasizes the instrumental role of trees in the development of human society, and implies that protecting trees is both humanity’s evolutionary role and duty. To support this argument, she offers scientific evidence of humans evolving around trees, including physical adaptations, brain development, and reactions to chemical stimuli. She also emphasizes appeals to the empathetic attachment of humans to trees through personifying language, vivid imagery, and references to universal human experiences such as enjoying the smell of a new book. With biology as the logical basis, and human empathy as the emotional core, Rix argues for a new human understanding of trees as organisms with “profound agency”, deserving of appreciation. 

Rix's publication choice of The Guardian is perfectly suited to broaden her audience and to fascinate readers who are scientifically inclined. When Rix describes how human fingers “deform like a slightly deflated tyre to the shape of the branch”, she relies on the reader’s intuition to connect this anatomical fact with their own knowledge and experience. The typical reader knows the shape of human fingers, but may not have thought of them as adaptations to an arboreal environment before. Thus, Rix’s use of logic combines with the reader’s prior understanding to help them see that the physical form of human bodies is not arbitrary, but a product of human-tree coevolution. When Rix explains that humans seek out chocolate and vanilla because of their psychoactive ingredients, theobromine and vanillin–and that trees which produced these compounds were more likely to pass on their genes due to humans spreading their seeds–it is more persuasive to her audience than an anecdotal, faith-based, or emotional argument would be. By stressing the underlying chemistry of chocolate and vanilla, Rix appeals both to her audience's intellectual curiosity and their expertise.

While scientific evidence gives her article a logical bedrock, the implications of her argument–that which would drive readers to think deeply, and to take action–are rooted in emotion. Rix uses pathos to appeal to humanity’s empathy for nature, and especially its primordial connection to trees. Notably, Rix begins by telling the story of Lucy One, an early human whose fossilized remains were found in Ethiopia in 1974. Lucy lived in trees, and was the first hominid known to have walked upright. Lucy is described not just in scientific terms, but first as “a girl who lived in a tree.” However distant Lucy lived in the past, readers are able to not just empathize but identify with her. After a section in which Rix introduces the notion that "trees are chemical manipulators...using sun and time and carbon to make incredibly complex compounds, which are finely tuned through evolution to domesticate people”, Rix consciously returns to the emotional connections between humans and trees instead of ending with cold scientific facts. She uses vivid natural imagery to produce a feeling of wonder in the readers, with descriptions of  “[a] glimpse of root in a cave roof, the taste of an unusual fruit…a mirage-like cluster of palm trees in the desert”. These phrases conjure up images of trees as miraculous life-forms, intertwined with nature and human society in ways we don’t fully understand. Beyond simply informing her audience of evolutionary history, Rix aims to conclude her argument by inspiring intense appreciation for trees. 

One device she uses to achieve this is the repeated personification of trees as having humanlike will. Rather than describing their influence on humanity as blind evolutionary forces (trees with traits beneficial to humans were more likely to survive and produce offspring, and vice versa), she portrays trees as active participants in this dynamic. The use of words such as “genius”, “agency”, and “domesticating [humans]” in reference to trees anthropomorphizes them as conscious entities with decision-making powers. In doing so, Rix asks her audience to replace our traditional view of trees as docile with a contrary image of trees as powerful and mysterious; as Rix points out, “it is too easy to think of trees as passive because we cannot see what they are doing.” One effect of Rix’s personification of trees is an increased sense of closeness between her audience and the trees themselves. When Rix gives trees human-like characteristics, it allows us to view trees with greater empathy. It becomes much easier for us (and Rix’s initial audience) to see trees as worthy of appreciation and protection if they are understood as silent, benevolent shapers of the natural world than if they are passive objects, to be used or destroyed by humans with impunity.

This is the change Rix seeks to foster with her argument, though it is never explicitly stated in the article. The unstated context in which it was written is centuries of human pollution, deforestation, and habitat loss, and a rising awareness of these issues. Although the exigence for the article is environmental justice, Rix only touches on the subject briefly. She refers to humans “tak[ing] a chainsaw and clear[ing] a hillside of” trees, and she posits that resistance to cutting down beautiful, famous, or culturally significant trees is a result of our “aesthetic appreciation…cultivated” by those trees themselves. Despite this relatively subtle nod to environmental protection, once the reader has understood Rix’s argument, its unspoken implications are highly interwoven with environmentalism. By revealing the mighty influence of trees on human existence, and portraying this relationship as symbiotic, Rix implies that humanity has a duty to protect and preserve trees, to help them thrive as they helped humans thrive. Furthermore, by destroying trees and corrupting their environments, humans are failing to fulfill their end of this relationship. Rix’s focus on empathy for trees supports this argument, as emotional connection drives much of human behavior. While it may seem her article seeks only a change in understanding, understanding breeds action. If humans view trees as the complex and important organisms they are, and have a renewed appreciation for them, they may be more motivated to take action to ensure their protection.