You know how coral polyps have a mobile stage before they settle down and turn into coral in a reef? What if a tree had a young stage where it was like a bird or a deer or something? The tree grows a few great big fruits each year (or perhaps saves up energy to fruit once every several years) and when the fruit is ripe it cracks open on the ground to let out an animal. This animal then either travels some distance and plants itself and becomes a sapling if the tree is an R strategist or if it is a K strategist then it feeds the animal a milk like sap until it can hunt on its own and then the animal goes out to do animal things and get big and fat and then plants itself and becomes a big strong sapling. Both strategies would help disperse the plant far and be better at finding good locations than traditional seeds, and the K strategy would also serve to help the young not compete with the old for resources (old eat lots of sunlight and canopy space, young eat roots and tubers and stuff from other plants) and possibly also help recover quickly after a storm (big trees go down in strong winds but it triggers the young tree-deer to plant themselves and they outcompete other species trying to take that space) or to help with parasites or other competitors (young tree-birds spend the first year of their life eating aphids and caterpillars off the tree, young tree-deer might dig up saplings of other species and plant themselves in their place).
At extremes of this kind of evolutionary path you might even get eusocial and cast behavior like you see with ants. Each tree might be protected by a flock of tree-birds who protect the tree and maybe forage for it to suplament its roots and leaves and the tree might feed and shelter the tree-birds during the winter. Then every once in a while the tree sends out a drone tree-bird to go find and mate with another tree’s queen tree-bird who will then plant herself and repeat the cycle.
You know how coral polyps have a mobile stage before they settle down and turn into coral in a reef? What if a tree had a young stage where it was like a bird or a deer or something? The tree grows a few great big fruits each year (or perhaps saves up energy to fruit once every several years) and when the fruit is ripe it cracks open on the ground to let out an animal. This animal then either travels some distance and plants itself and becomes a sapling if the tree is an R strategist or if it is a K strategist then it feeds the animal a milk like sap until it can hunt on its own and then the animal goes out to do animal things and get big and fat and then plants itself and becomes a big strong sapling. Both strategies would help disperse the plant far and be better at finding good locations than traditional seeds, and the K strategy would also serve to help the young not compete with the old for resources (old eat lots of sunlight and canopy space, young eat roots and tubers and stuff from other plants) and possibly also help recover quickly after a storm (big trees go down in strong winds but it triggers the young tree-deer to plant themselves and they outcompete other species trying to take that space) or to help with parasites or other competitors (young tree-birds spend the first year of their life eating aphids and caterpillars off the tree, young tree-deer might dig up saplings of other species and plant themselves in their place).
At extremes of this kind of evolutionary path you might even get eusocial and cast behavior like you see with ants. Each tree might be protected by a flock of tree-birds who protect the tree and maybe forage for it to suplament its roots and leaves and the tree might feed and shelter the tree-birds during the winter. Then every once in a while the tree sends out a drone tree-bird to go find and mate with another tree’s queen tree-bird who will then plant herself and repeat the cycle.