★★★★☆ | Nature | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
Reading Notes
Trees are much more complex than we observe:
- Mature trees transfer nutrients to other struggling trees through root systems (especially offspring)
- Communicate danger from invasive pests through root systems to other trees a long distance away.
- Strong indication that trees have memories of past events.
- Transplanted trees don’t have the same communication or intelligence.
- Symbiotic relationship with mycelium network of fungi (the wood wide web).
Are trees sentient? Impossible to say they’re not. Perhaps akin to an alien life form — just different?
Tree time: a tree is still a toddler until they’re 50. Mature at 500.
Highlights
When you know that trees experience pain and have memories and that tree parents live together with their children, then you can no longer just chop them down and disrupt their lives with large machines. (Location 99)
most individual trees of the same species growing in the same stand are connected to each other through their root systems. It appears that nutrient exchange and helping neighbors in times of need is the rule, and this leads to the conclusion that forests are superorganisms with interconnections much like ant colonies. (Location 132)
Planted forests, which is what most of the coniferous forests in Central Europe are, behave more like the street kids I describe in chapter 27. Because their roots are irreparably damaged when they are planted, they seem almost incapable of networking with one another. As a rule, trees in planted forests like these behave like loners and suffer from their isolation. (Location 163)
fungi operate like fiber-optic Internet cables. Their thin filaments penetrate the ground, weaving through it in almost unbelievable density. One teaspoon of forest soil contains many miles of these “hyphae.” (Location 220)
Over centuries, a single fungus can cover many square miles and network an entire forest. (Location 222)
Thanks to selective breeding, our cultivated plants have, for the most part, lost their ability to communicate above or below ground—you could say they are deaf and dumb—and therefore they are easy prey for insect pests.12 That is one reason why modern agriculture uses so many pesticides. (Location 236)
Every five years, a beech tree produces at least thirty thousand beechnuts (thanks to climate change, it now does this as often as every two or three years, but we’ll put that aside for the moment). It is sexually mature at about 80 to 150 years of age, depending on how much light it gets where it’s growing. Assuming it grows to be 400 years old, it can fruit at least sixty times and produce a total of about 1.8 million beechnuts. From these, exactly one will develop into a full-grown tree—and in forest terms, that is a high rate of success, similar to winning the lottery. (Location 422)
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. (Location 631)
There is a honey fungus in Switzerland that covers almost 120 acres and is about a thousand years old. Another in Oregon is estimated to be 2,400 years old, extends for 2,000 acres, and weighs 660 tons. That makes fungi the largest known living organisms in the world. (Location 633)
Up to half the biomass of a forest is hidden in this lower story. Most lifeforms that bustle about here cannot be seen with the naked eye. (Location 988)
There are more life forms in a handful of forest soil than there are people on the planet. (Location 993)
it rains sticky honeydew under trees infested with aphids. Perhaps you’ve had the experience of parking your car under a stricken maple only to come back to a thoroughly filthy windscreen. (Location 1293)
The quaking aspen takes its name from its leaves, which react to the slightest breath of wind. And although we have sayings that associate this characteristic with fear (“to shake like a leaf”), quaking aspens don’t shake because they are afraid. Their leaves hang from flexible stems and flutter in the breeze, exposing first their upper and then their lower surfaces to the sun. This means both sides of the leaf can photosynthesize. This is in contrast to other species, where the underside is reserved for breathing. (Location 2019)
In Fishlake National Forest, Utah, there is a quaking aspen that has taken thousands of years to cover more than 100 acres and grow more than forty thousand trunks. (Location 2026)
When the capabilities of vegetative beings become known, and their emotional lives and needs are recognized, then the way we treat plants will gradually change, as well. (Location 2668)