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Ancient Trees: Trees That Live for a Thousand Years
“Parker’s many beautiful, full-color images contribute a great deal, but what makes this book especially inter-esting is a discussion of the roles these trees have played through the ages in human religions, myths, economies, and everyday life.”— Library Journal . “More than an adornment for the coffee table.”— Washington Post. “One of my favorites....All the trees are awe-inspiring.”— Philadelphia Inquirer.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 23, 2024
Beeindruckendes Buch mit tollen Fotos.
February 2, 2013
Ancient Trees is a catalogue of the world's trees that (as far as we know right know) live for 1,000 years or more.
Avoiding the blandness of the encyclopaedic approach, the reader is graced with a touch of history, superstition, spirituality and botany. Aside from informing, Ancient trees provides inspiration for travel - without the mercantile nature of real travel guides!
There is a downside to this piece of course - so many of the ancient trees mentioned have been absolutely devastated by humankinds progress. It's hard not to feel slightly depressed when the authors discuss how many ancient beasts have been lost.
Highly recommended to any nature geeks
Avoiding the blandness of the encyclopaedic approach, the reader is graced with a touch of history, superstition, spirituality and botany. Aside from informing, Ancient trees provides inspiration for travel - without the mercantile nature of real travel guides!
There is a downside to this piece of course - so many of the ancient trees mentioned have been absolutely devastated by humankinds progress. It's hard not to feel slightly depressed when the authors discuss how many ancient beasts have been lost.
Highly recommended to any nature geeks
August 9, 2019
This had the makings of a good book: interesting topic and good color photos. Unfortunately, the print was so tiny that I basically couldn't read the text, or only with great difficulty. My guess is that the book was laid out for a full-size coffee-table format, then photo-reduced to lower the cost. So be aware that if you have old eyes, you are likely to struggle to read the thing. Overall, 4 stars for photos, 1.5 stars for illegible text. Oh, well.
See first comment re the 1999 first edition.
See first comment re the 1999 first edition.
August 14, 2019
They lend to our lives a sense of timelessness
"If you've seen one redwood tree, you've seen them all." --Ronald Reagan
"Among all the varied productions with which Nature has adorned the surface of the earth, none awakens our sympathies, or interests our imagination so powerfully as those venerable trees which seem to have stood the lapse of ages, silent witnesses of the successive generations of man, to whose destiny they bear so touching a resemblance, alike in their budding, their prime, and their decay." --John Muir (from page 7 of the Introduction)
A tree that lives for a thousand years inspires awe and reverence. These are wonders of the world both modern and ancient, Reagan's insipid drivel notwithstanding. They need to be saved, and they need to be seen. I wish I could see them all. This book is as close as I'll ever get. I have, though, stood in the redwood forest of California and felt the sense of awe that so inspired Muir, a sense of being inside the sacred cathedral of nature. My senses were hushed and my spirit elevated. I wonder what Reagan thought when he stood there (as he undoubtedly did). Perhaps he wondered how many cubic feet of timber the tallest tree in the world might yield.
There are eighteen chapters in this attractive coffee table style book, each devoted to different types of tree with specimens over a thousand years old, from the majestic redwood to the strange welwitschia, the "dwarf tree of the Namib desert," which reaches a height of only about five feet, and produces but a single pair of leaves in its lifetime, which can extend to two thousand years. Other chapters are devoted to fig trees, mighty oaks, sweet chestnuts, limes, olives, yews, cedar, gingko, the Montezuma Cypress, and of course the Bristlecone Pine, the oldest tree of all with one specimen, the Methuselah tree, said to be over 4,700 years old.
The colorful photographs from around the world by Edward Parker are beautiful, lavish and give us a sense of the enduring presence of the trees in their settings. There is a map of the world with numbered bullets to show locations.
The text, which tends to the cloying at times, alas, could use some work. Such boilerplate sentences as "Yet today, despite all the research that has taken place, the Amazon continues to be an awesome and mysterious place that holds many secrets" (p. 60) are all too frequent. Would that the text were more devoted to the simple sharing of factual information about the flowering of the trees, pollination, pollinators, seed dispersal, and perhaps about related species. The attempt to wed the trees to the ancient myths of indigenous peoples or to fix the "religious significance" of the trees has its place, but is takes up too much of the text here. I would prefer more information on the ecology of the trees. In the chapter on the majestic European limes, nowhere is it mentioned that these are not citrus trees! (Or am I the only one to think that a lime tree might be a citrus tree?)
The sometimes careless editing also detracts from the beauty of this book. While it may be forgiven that "gingko" is spelled two different ways ("gingko" and "ginkgo") on the same page (e.g., on pages, 19, 182, 183), it is not acceptable to have a photo of Brazilian nuts mistakenly identified as pods (p. 63). Additionally, on pages 30-31 a sentence is broken off and then there are three lines of repeated text.
In spite of these flaws this is a beautiful book that makes us feel in touch with nature and gives us a sense of the strength and endurance of living things.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
"If you've seen one redwood tree, you've seen them all." --Ronald Reagan
"Among all the varied productions with which Nature has adorned the surface of the earth, none awakens our sympathies, or interests our imagination so powerfully as those venerable trees which seem to have stood the lapse of ages, silent witnesses of the successive generations of man, to whose destiny they bear so touching a resemblance, alike in their budding, their prime, and their decay." --John Muir (from page 7 of the Introduction)
A tree that lives for a thousand years inspires awe and reverence. These are wonders of the world both modern and ancient, Reagan's insipid drivel notwithstanding. They need to be saved, and they need to be seen. I wish I could see them all. This book is as close as I'll ever get. I have, though, stood in the redwood forest of California and felt the sense of awe that so inspired Muir, a sense of being inside the sacred cathedral of nature. My senses were hushed and my spirit elevated. I wonder what Reagan thought when he stood there (as he undoubtedly did). Perhaps he wondered how many cubic feet of timber the tallest tree in the world might yield.
There are eighteen chapters in this attractive coffee table style book, each devoted to different types of tree with specimens over a thousand years old, from the majestic redwood to the strange welwitschia, the "dwarf tree of the Namib desert," which reaches a height of only about five feet, and produces but a single pair of leaves in its lifetime, which can extend to two thousand years. Other chapters are devoted to fig trees, mighty oaks, sweet chestnuts, limes, olives, yews, cedar, gingko, the Montezuma Cypress, and of course the Bristlecone Pine, the oldest tree of all with one specimen, the Methuselah tree, said to be over 4,700 years old.
The colorful photographs from around the world by Edward Parker are beautiful, lavish and give us a sense of the enduring presence of the trees in their settings. There is a map of the world with numbered bullets to show locations.
The text, which tends to the cloying at times, alas, could use some work. Such boilerplate sentences as "Yet today, despite all the research that has taken place, the Amazon continues to be an awesome and mysterious place that holds many secrets" (p. 60) are all too frequent. Would that the text were more devoted to the simple sharing of factual information about the flowering of the trees, pollination, pollinators, seed dispersal, and perhaps about related species. The attempt to wed the trees to the ancient myths of indigenous peoples or to fix the "religious significance" of the trees has its place, but is takes up too much of the text here. I would prefer more information on the ecology of the trees. In the chapter on the majestic European limes, nowhere is it mentioned that these are not citrus trees! (Or am I the only one to think that a lime tree might be a citrus tree?)
The sometimes careless editing also detracts from the beauty of this book. While it may be forgiven that "gingko" is spelled two different ways ("gingko" and "ginkgo") on the same page (e.g., on pages, 19, 182, 183), it is not acceptable to have a photo of Brazilian nuts mistakenly identified as pods (p. 63). Additionally, on pages 30-31 a sentence is broken off and then there are three lines of repeated text.
In spite of these flaws this is a beautiful book that makes us feel in touch with nature and gives us a sense of the strength and endurance of living things.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
December 14, 2021
I'm a huge lover of trees so this book only amplified my awe and reverence for these mighty beings. So much interesting info in how some of the ancient trees stay strong and thrive, as well as connections to their roles in society. All in all this book inspired and excited me to continue to explore the marvels of the natural world!
March 28, 2022
A well-written, beautiful book. Lovely photographs, and good, easy-to-understand information. It's a little dated, but it still reads very well.
June 13, 2024
Well worth the time to read and gaze at the beautiful color photographs.
February 26, 2020
This is a great book providing information about trees that are hundreds or thousands of years old. It has some nice photography adding to the information provided by the text. Well worth reading if you have any interest in ecology.
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