The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate — Discoveries from a Secret World

by Peter Wohlleben

trees need to communicate, and electrical impulses are just one of their many means of communication.

Trees also use the senses of smell and taste for communication.

Perhaps the saddest plants of all are those we have enslaved in our agricultural systems. They seem to have lost the ability to communicate, and, as Wohlleben says, are thus rendered deaf and dumb.

The saliva of each species is different, and trees can match the saliva to the insect. Indeed, the match can be so precise that trees can release pheromones that summon specific beneficial predators.

A tree’s silence could be because of a serious illness or, perhaps, the loss of its fungal network, which would leave the tree completely cut off from the latest news.

also shrubs and grasses—and possibly all plant species—exchange information this way. However, when we step into farm fields, the vegetation becomes very quiet.

This is because a tree can be only as strong as the forest that surrounds it.

Conifers bloom almost every year,

Scientists have determined that slow growth when the tree is young is a prerequisite if a tree is to live to a ripe old age.

Thanks to slow growth, their inner woody cells are tiny and contain almost no air. That makes the trees flexible and resistant to breaking in storms.

there is a good reason for this ideal appearance: stability.

Trees that don’t follow the etiquette manual find themselves in trouble.

Whereas most deciduous trees leap at chances to grab more light, most conifers stubbornly refuse. They vow to grow straight or not at all.

Only the pine has the cheek to greedily redirect its crown toward the light.

A mature beech tree can send more than 130 gallons of water a day coursing through its branches and leaves, and this is what it does as long as it can draw enough water up from below.

In the warmer seasons, it doesn’t rain nearly enough to replenish water levels in the desiccated soil. Therefore, the tree stockpiles water in winter.

tough trees that grow on this slope are well versed in the practices of denial and can withstand far worse conditions than their colleagues who are spoiled for water.

Mimosas are tropical creeping herbs.

Gagliano designed an experiment where individual drops of water fell on the plants’ foliage at regular intervals. At first, the anxious leaves closed immediately, but after a while, the little plants learned there was no danger of damage from the water droplets. After that, the leaves remained open despite the drops.

there is research in the field that reveals more than just behavioral changes: when trees are really thirsty, they begin to scream.

The trees might be screaming out a dire warning to their colleagues that water levels are running low.

After the fight for light, it is the fight for water that finally decides who wins.

Fungi are in between animals and plants. Their cell walls are made of chitin—a substance never found in plants—which makes them more like insects.

In addition, they cannot photosynthesize and depend on organic connections with other living beings they can feed on.

This connection makes fungi something like the forest Internet.

fungi are not exactly dainty in their requirements. They demand up to a third of the tree’s total food production in return for their services.

Diversity provides security for ancient forests.

So many questions remain unanswered. Perhaps we are poorer for having lost a possible explanation or richer for having gained a mystery.

In Central Europe, there are no longer any true old-growth forests. The largest extensive stand of trees is between two hundred and three hundred years old. Until these forest preserves become old-growth forests once again, we must look to the West Coast of Canada to understand the role played by ancient trees.

large quantities of moss on the branches and in the branch forks of trees of this advanced age.

These algae capture nitrogen from the air and process it into a form the trees can use. Rain then washes this natural fertilizer down the trunks, making it available to the roots. Thus, old trees fertilize the forest and help their offspring get a better start in life.

14 — TREE OR NOT TREE?

Brain? you ask. Isn’t that a bit farfetched? Possibly, but now we know that trees can learn. This means they must store experiences somewhere, and therefore, there must be some kind of a storage mechanism inside the organism.

For there to be something we would recognize as a brain, neurological processes must be involved, and for these, in addition to chemical messages, you need electrical impulses. And these are precisely what we can measure in the tree, and we’ve been able to do so since as far back as the nineteenth century.

For some years now, a heated controversy has flared up among scientists. Can plants think? Are they intelligent?

In conjunction with his colleagues, František Baluška from the Institute of Cellular and Molecular Botany at the University of Bonn is of the opinion that brai...

The distinction between plant and animal is, after all, arbitrary and depends on the way an organism feeds itself: the former photosynthesizes and the latter eats other living beings.

Sometimes I suspect we would pay more attention to trees and other vegetation if we could establish beyond a doubt just how similar they are in many ways to animals.

Most lifeforms that bustle about here cannot be seen with the naked eye.

Referring To soil

erosion: it is one of the forest’s most dangerous natural enemies.

The forest can lose as much as 2,900 tons per square mile per year. The same area can replace only 290 tons annually through the weathering of stones underground,

In contrast, forests left undisturbed lose only 1 to 14 tons of soil per square mile per year.

intact forests, the soil under the trees becomes deeper and richer over time so that growing conditions for trees constantly improve.

Unfortunately, researchers are only peripherally interested in the thousands of species discovered so

Countless more species are waiting in vain to be discovered.

We don’t know how long it will take until true forest soil is created once again, but we do know that a hundred years is not enough.

To make it possible for this regeneration to happen at all, you need preserves with ancient forests free from any human interference. These are places where the diversity of soil life can survive, and these refuges can be the nucleuses for recovery in surrounding areas.

There are so many ways that forests can be kept both undisturbed and productive!

The forest is really a gigantic carbon dioxide vacuum that constantly filters out and stores this component of the air.

some of this carbon dioxide does indeed return to the atmosphere after a tree’s death, but most of it remains locked in the ecosystem forever.