I prefer to believe in cooperation as a working principle, not competition. I like to think about complex interacting systems. I love the notion of secret traffic among trees. Like my scientific brethren and sistren on the opposite side of the bias, I am not blind to the social implications of lessons purportedly drawn from nature. I can say.
Big trees support small trees.
Trees stand together, they don't struggle against each other. When we take one away, we send waves through an interconnected community. Which is, of course, as oversimplified a picture as is the notion that the forest is nothing but the sum of its trees. There is plenty of competition in a forest. Intertree networks spread disease and poisons as well as nutrients and hormones.