The Hidden Life of Trees. what they feel, how they communicate. discoveries from a secret world
by Wohlleben, Peter
pub. by Greystone Books, Vancouver/Berkley/London 2015       isbn 978-1-77164-248-4 -     - LCCN = 2021 - - (originally pub byLudwig Verlag, Munich) - - - Total 272 p.
This book has a forward by Tim Flannery p. vii - and introductin to the English version by the author p. X and an introduction p xiii then 36 short chapters followed by a short chapter by Dr. Suzanne Simrad from the Univ. of British Columbia
Some of the interesting things I learned from this book - Concerning communication between trees, and inside a tree he found that electrical signals, which move very rapidly in animals (almost instantaneously) travel very slowly in trees... about .33 of an inch per second. They also communicate moving chemicals along their living cells very much including their roots, and from one trees roots to another tree via the myceliums of certain funji. These signals can cause connected trees to help one another, for instance causing a signaled tree to produce substances which can drive off preditors. Such as making chemicals which cause their leaves to taste bad for foraging insects.
Wohlleben describes how trees live, and how they have grown over the millenia, enlarging and narrowing their range slowly in response to climate change, such as the last ice age several thousand years ago.
He also writes of trees in an anthropromorphic style. That is, He writes as if the trees think and feel and imagines how they grow, thrive, live and die from the perspective that the trees have feelings etc.
While I trust the science he reveals I am unsettled by the idea that the trees are thinking and feeling. However with the demonstrated ways trees seem to respond to stimuli and danger... one wonders.
Read this book - It may cause thinking.
Immediately after I read this I read another book on forestry (Finding the Mother Tree) by Suzanne Simard, which is heavier on the science and describes university level science experiments in this field.
~ 2023-01-10 ~

to Books index page.

-