Book Recommendation - THE HIDDEN LIFE OF TREES
Yes, this post is not about vegetables; it's about trees growing wild in the forest.
If you like fruits and nuts and/or have planted a tree or two in your yard, you might be interested in learning about what trees know and how they cope with their environment. You probably will not convert your front or backyard into forest after reading this book, but maybe some of the ideas in the book will cause you to think about how to provide a better environment for the trees you have and, perhaps, even your vegetables...
Peter Wohlleben, a German forester, who still manages an old-growth forest of beech and oaks in Hummel, Germany, became an ecological rock star after his publishing of Das geheime Leben der Bรคume in 2015. Like, probably, most of us he viewed trees as an economic commodity whose value was mostly determined according to the parameters of the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory's 1974 Wood Handbook: Wood as an Engineering Material.
That view changed in 1987 when Wohlleben noticed what appeared to be moss covering strange looking stones around a dead stump. Those stones turned out to be living wood of a very much alive stump. That epiphanic discovery started him thinking differently about trees and ultimately led to the 2015 book. In his book Wohlleben explained how trees of the same species may share nutrition and communicate with one another in the forest as well as collaborate with fungi in the soil. The English edition of his book quickly followed in 2017 as the Hidden Life of TREES and immediately appeared in the New York Times' Best Seller List.
Wohlleben's simple, insightful writing style provides lay readers with information incorporating scientific research of the last 30 years that indicates that there is a lot more going on in the forest than what most of us ever imagined - or, probably never really thought about at all. Trees (and maybe plants in general) do communicate with their kin and other beings - sometimes chemically, sometimes electrically via their roots, via the mycorrhizal network of fungi, and sometimes via the wind. For readers interested in getting to some of the supporting research, key papers are included in the extensive footnote section at the back of the book. Happy reading...
That view changed in 1987 when Wohlleben noticed what appeared to be moss covering strange looking stones around a dead stump. Those stones turned out to be living wood of a very much alive stump. That epiphanic discovery started him thinking differently about trees and ultimately led to the 2015 book. In his book Wohlleben explained how trees of the same species may share nutrition and communicate with one another in the forest as well as collaborate with fungi in the soil. The English edition of his book quickly followed in 2017 as the Hidden Life of TREES and immediately appeared in the New York Times' Best Seller List.
Wohlleben's simple, insightful writing style provides lay readers with information incorporating scientific research of the last 30 years that indicates that there is a lot more going on in the forest than what most of us ever imagined - or, probably never really thought about at all. Trees (and maybe plants in general) do communicate with their kin and other beings - sometimes chemically, sometimes electrically via their roots, via the mycorrhizal network of fungi, and sometimes via the wind. For readers interested in getting to some of the supporting research, key papers are included in the extensive footnote section at the back of the book. Happy reading...
n.b. Wohlleben is currently on tour promoting a new work, The Inner Life of Animals (Greystone Books, 2017).
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