Trees are a vital part of our environment and contribute to our health and well-being in addition to supporting each other in the web of life. I’m reblogging this because it’s important to understand more about these magnificent beings, especially as many now seem to under threat of destruction in our towns and cities, via local authorities.
Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees is one of those books that change the way you look at things – the world of trees and forests in particular.
Starting off as a conventional forester, he gradually became aware of the real life that was going on around him, rather than just seeing the trees as objects to be managed.
Trees are complex organisms that live in families, nurture each other, respond to their environment, live in symbiosis with other beings, have a circulation and a food system, move in response to environmental change – indeed they are complex social organisms just as we are. It’s just that their timescales are different – much more extended than ours, just as our timescales are much more extended than those of the mayfly.
The timescale for forests and their tree families measures in the hundreds and thousands of years. When we destroy…
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Eyes in the back of my Head 