The Wild Trees Quotes

“Time has a different quality in a forest, a different kind of flow. Time moves in circles, and events are linked, even if it's not obvious that they are linked. Events in a forest occur with precision in the flow of tree time, like the motions of an endless dance. (p. 12)”
― Richard Preston, The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring

“As for the trees themselves, water that flows into a giant redwood through its roots takes two weeks or longer to reach the top of the tree, moving slowly upward through the tree’s sapwood.”
― Richard Preston, The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring

“Botanists have a tradition of never revealing the exact location of a rare plant. Contact between humans and rare plants is generally risky for the plants. Many of the giant trees I describe in this book, as well as the groves they inhabit, have only recently been discovered, and in some cases have been seen by fewer than a dozen people, including myself. To honor the tradition of botany, I won’t reveal the exact locations of giant trees or groves if these locations have not been previously published. If a tree’s location has been published, or if the tree is no longer alive, then I will give its location.”
― Richard Preston, The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring

“Redwoods flourish in fog, but they don’t like salt air. They tend to appear in valleys that are just out of sight of the sea. In their relationship with the sea, redwoods are like cats that long to be stroked but are shy to the touch.”
― Richard Preston, The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring

“Lichens are small organisms that often grow on bark and on rocks. A lichen (sounds like “liken”) is a fungus growing in association with a species of alga or cyanobacterium, forming a single combined organism.”
― Richard Preston, The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring

“A zoologist at Humboldt State, Michael A. Camann, climbed in the Atlas Grove and took samples of the fern mats and discovered that they are also sprinkled with tiny aquatic creatures, crustaceans of an unnamed species of copepod. Copepods are oval-shaped, shrimp-like creatures, barely visible to the naked eye, that are sometimes called the insects of the ocean.”
― Richard Preston, The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring