Dunno, I'm sensitive to these things most of the time. I would say earth spirits, and plants have a different type of consciousness -- we always want to give spirits anthropomorphic traits for simplicity but it doesn't work that way.
Most earth/tree type spirits are very old and as such sort of have a "grandpa" air about them -- they're just not worried about the daily goings on so much. They talk extremely slowly and only telepathically... Thus, if you are a nature hippy dancing around trees you are probably paying enough attention to empathize... but, just walking past them? Nah, you will be out of range by the time you are able to absorb the information. This is why a lot of sensitive folks just naturally chill-ax in nature... They instinctively know there is a time component... Generally, trees can live ten times longer than you... So 100 minutes to them is like 10 for you. This is why most people miss their message.
Earth spirits are even slower speaking -- to understand you have a rock that is billions of years old possibly...
A day for you is less than a picosecond for them and it takes even more exposure to lock on to this type of energy. It might take you years of visiting a place repeatedly to really receive the telepathic component from the land you walk on. But, once you do you can probably recognize a place just by feel. Humans generally all experience them, but don't know it -- generally it is that "homey feel"...
In both cases it is easy to dismiss that energy away for obvious reasons....