NFT appreciation post
no, not those NFTs, Nitrogen Fixing Trees!
this NFT appreciation post was originally posted on IG on 8/6/23
all plants and trees need nitrogen to live and grow. there is a lot of nitrogen in our air in its gas form, but many trees can’t use nitrogen this way. most rely on absorbing nitrogen in the soil thru their roots. BUT there are some trees that love nitrogen gas and can draw the gas from the air and store it in their roots—these are called nitrogen fixing trees or NFTs (the only NFTs i care about tbh).
going deeper into the nerdy weeds, NFTs can’t draw nitrogen out of their air on their own, they need help from a bacteria called RHIZOBIA which live in the soil. rhizobia and NFTs form symbiotic relationships where the rhizobia get sugars from the tree to live while the tree gets nitrogen in a form it can actually use to grow.
NFTs and rhizobia work together to draw nitrogen out of the air and into the soil, storing the nitrogen in little nodules attached to the trees’ root systems. at the end of the bacteria’s life cycle, the nodules decompose and release their stored nitrogen into the soil—their death making nitrogen available for surrounding plants to grow.
most trees and plants take nitrogen out of the soil, making nitrogen deficiency a huge issue especially as colonialism has instituted monocropping for mass production. big ag companies now resort to using chemical fertilizers to increase nitrogen levels which has resulted in extensive ecological damage and soil erosion.
because more fertilizer is applied than plants can absorb, it washes out of the soil into waterways, poisoning water supplies and evaporating into the atmosphere in the form of nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas.
