This tree wants to be struck by lightning

Before a discovery in a Panamanian rainforest, 'it seemed impossible that lightning could be a good thing for the trees', says a scientist

- REBECCA DZOMBAK

WHEN LIGHTNING STRIKES a tree in the tropics, the whole forest explodes. "At their most extreme, it kind of looks like a bomb went off," said Evan Gora, a forest ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York. Dozens of trees around the one that was struck are electrocuted. Within months, a sizable circle of forest can wither away. Somehow, a single survivor stands, seemingly healthier than ever.

A new study by Gora, published last week in the journal New Phytologist, reveals that some of the biggest trees in a rainforest don't just survive lightning strikes. They thrive.