“The Hidden Life of Trees” by Peter Wohlleben

This book is a quick read, but very eye-opening and easy to comprehend. Wohlleben’s main objective here is to chare what he has learned as a forester in Germany about the incredible lives of trees, and how this conflicts with our common misconceptions of them. In particular, he has some insights into how we harvest wood and grow trees for wood that directly conflicts how trees want to live and grow.

For example, the book discusses how trees can communicate with each other, and even send each other nutrients to help with growth. We often assume that trees are loners, or if anything, solely compete with each other for space. But that’s not the case, a tree growing in a forest among other trees of the same species will do better than a tree surrounded by strangers. There are even trees that become friends and don’t compete with each other for space, instead finding a harmonious equilibrium.

Building off of that, there are many examples of trees having individuality. This primarily shows in one telling example of how trees decide when to let their leaves fall. More cautious trees drop their leaves earlier, while the daring ones wait. Wohlleben found 3 identical trees growing close together (therefore under the same environmental conditions) and observed how year after year, one tree’s leaves would change color before the other two. They all shared the same environment, so this difference could only be due to the individual tree’s preference.

The way we harvest wood today is by planting a ton of trees, and then forcing them to grow at alarming rates while they are young. They are then cut down after several years and the process starts over again. Time and time again though, we are shown evidence that trees naturally grow slowly and stably, otherwise they are at risk for attack from insects. In fact, older trees are often shown to be growing more than the younger ones are, since they already have an established root structure and a thicker trunk to support extra weight.

This was a very cool book that was revealing into both how trees live and how we treat them. It calls into question some of our assumptions about the nature of life and what makes something alive. We know that plants live, yet we rarely treat them as such. Recent research demonstrates how wrong we may be, and a rethinking of how we treat the nature around us is in order.