Fionnáin quoted Through Vegetal Being by Michael Marder
We must learn how to look at a tree, not to perceive its present form in order to re-present it mentally and fix it by naming it. Rather, we must gaze at its being as living and changing. Now we designate a birch with the same name in the spring, the summer, the autumn and the winter, although this name refers to forms, colors, and even to sounds and to odors, which are absolutely different according to the time of the year, not to say that of the day. Using the same name to allude to the birch at any time, we remove it from its living presence and deprive ourselves of our sensory perceptions to enter into presence with it. However, is it not the mode of presence that our culture taught us to consider the truth? — a truth that asks us to give up our living perceptions. How could we, then, care about life, ours and that of the world?
From Irigaray, chapter 7: Cultivating our sensory perceptions