The Hidden Life of Trees (Dec 2022)

[Rachel]

A blurb from Google Books: "Are trees social beings? In The Hidden Life of Trees forester and author Peter Wohlleben convincingly makes the case that, yes, the forest is a social network. He draws on groundbreaking scientific discoveries to describe how trees are like human families: tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, support them as they grow, share nutrients with those who are sick or struggling, and even warn each other of impending dangers. Wohlleben also shares his deep love of woods and forests, explaining the amazing processes of life, death, and regeneration that he has observed in his woodland."


I learned of this book after reading The Overstory, which partly talked about how plants/trees can communicate at a basic level. I haven't read it yet, and I hope it's good - it has good reviews. I love trees (especially baldcypress - that's my favorite) and am interested to learn more. Some of the reviews say there's a lot of anthropomorphizing in this book so we'll see how that goes I suppose. Let me know what y'all think!!

[Rachel]

There's lots of good biology information and explanations, but it's wrapped in personification and hard for me to read and take super seriously. But I've also taken many a forestry class so I'm probably not necessarily the intended audience. It seems more targeted to older school age kids by the writing style. But again - there's lots of good and informative biology in this book! I give it 3 stars.

I unintentionally paired The Hidden Life of Trees with The Understory (the January book) and think that's a good combo because The Understory is fiction but treats trees with a reverence not often seen and is a good followup to this book!