THE LIVING FOREST
Cal Flyn meets Peter Wohlleben, the unconventional forester whose bestselling book ‘Can You Hear the Trees Talking?’ presents a compelling case that trees are sentient, social beings
German forester Peter Wohlleben unveils the hidden life of trees, presenting the case that they are sentient beings
In his internationally bestselling book The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben drew from decades of experience as a forester in his native Germany, plus ground-breaking new research, as he painted a portrait of a forest as a single, cacophonous whole. Individual trees, he wrote, not only sleep, experience pain and feel fear, but they are linked through their root systems and a ‘wood-wide web’ of fungal mycelium to create a vast social network.
In this way, he wrote, they share resources with their needy brethren, keeping alive their aged and injured long after they would otherwise have died. Some trees, he claimed, form life partnerships, growing with their roots so tightly interwoven they might be considered a single being.
Far from deadwood, trees should be seen as sentient beings, with complex inner lives – albeit running on a different timescale to our own. Wohlleben asks us to consider trees as a slow moving race. Like Tolkien’s Ents, they are vast and have unusual powers. Trees, he has written, ‘feel more through the tips of their roots than we can with our fingers’.
The Hidden Life of Trees was instantly embraced by the public, and its readers found themselves near giddy with knowledge; the trees around them now seeming to radiate with life – even wisdom. Trees that only recently had seemed barely more animated than stone were now reimagined as sentient.
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Having inspired hundreds of thousands of adults to look afresh at the natural world, Wohlleben has now published an adaptation of his hit book for children. Can You Hear the Trees Talking? offers younger readers a simplified version of the original text, along with hands-on experiments to try when they are out in the woods.
Having taught local children in a ‘forest school’ for twenty years, Wohlleben tells me that he has plenty of experience in adapting to a younger audience. ‘What was most important, for me,’ he tells me, ‘was to make it fun. For example, I tell children to taste the difference: they close their eyes and taste the oaks and the beeches and the birch and the maple, and it’s one big adventure in the forest.’
Forest schools have also become increasingly popular in Scotland, demonstrating a greater interest in the great outdoors in general and trees in particular, amongst the young. In general, he says, children are often more open to what he has to say than many adults. ‘Mostly the parents look at the clock and say, “okay, now hurry up”. But children discover a rotten stump, see all the animals living there, spend time. We might spend all day travelling just 300 metres. For adults, that can be boring because they are interested in miles, not in wonders.’
This question of wonder is key, he underlines. In the past, we’ve been guilty of explaining nature in purely mechanistic terms, as if it were ‘a big machine’.
‘We forgot that we are surrounded by sensitive living and feeling beings,’ he says. ‘We think that wonders are far away – in the Amazon, rather than our forests at home. But that’s not true.’
Wohlleben’s book, with its emotive language, was controversial in science and forestry circles. Many accused him of anthropomorphism, that is, by describing them as ‘crying out’ in pain (through chemical signals) or experiencing ‘fear’, he is falsely portraying trees to have human feelings or behaviours. Wohlleben laughs when I ask him about this. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘It seems to be anthropomorphic. It seems to be like a metaphor. But it isn’t.’
The science, he says, is on his side. It is certainly true that since the original book was published there have been many more enchanting findings. He gives me an example, asking, ‘Can trees feel pain?’ So, say a bark beetle bites into the bark of a tree. ‘You can measure the electric reaction, and then a defence reaction,’ he says.
Some scientists say this is not pain, but a simple reflex. Wohlleben points me to research from the University of Bonn which demonstrates that plants and trees produce pain-suppressing substances in response to damage. ‘In some parts, they use the same molecules as we do,’ he notes. Pain suppression, he adds, ‘is only necessary if you are conscious’.
Such experiments, he insists, are the ‘hard science’ which forms the bedrock to his own writing. He sees his work as ‘translation’ from the dense, impersonal tone of scientific papers into ‘human language’ couched in emotion and life. ‘Sometimes I have the impression that it’s a sport of scientists to write without emotion,’ he laughs. ‘That’s why lay people don’t understand.’
The criticism directed at his own work is down, he feels, to ‘a question of style’. Certainly, his style is very engaging, making the basics of plant science easy to grasp even for young children. And his simple assignments – blowing bubbles through the water vessels of a birch log, or using a fallen trunk like a tin-can telephone – are enlivening and memorable.
What’s crucial, says Wohlleben, is that children and adults alike learn to recognise and appreciate the differences between ancient woodland and commercial forestry. ‘In old growth woodland, you see all those social activities between trees. For example, old stumps are nurtured by surrounding trees,’ he explains, sometimes being kept alive for centuries after the original trees were felled.
‘In plantations you don’t see that, because planted trees have their root tips cut before planting. The system doesn’t recover, and so you don’t see this interaction between trees. All those wonders of patience, of co-operation, you can see much more easily in an old growth forest.’
The ancient Caledonian Forest still exists in fragmented form in Scotland today, and its remnants offer perfect opportunities for families to test Wohlleben’s theories in the real world. One particularly good place to examine what he has to say is at Rothiemurchus Estate, at the foot of the Cairngorms, where there are 50km of maintained forest tracks and the opportunity to spot red squirrels and pine martens (see www.rothiemurchus.net for more information).
“We think that wonders are far away in the Amazon, not in our forests at home. But that’s not true
Further south, the shores of Loch Lomond are cloaked in ancient woodland; a visitor’s centre one mile north of Aberfoyle offers plenty of information about local history and wildlife (opening hours may be curtailed due to coronavirus containment measures, so check www.forestryandland.gov.scot for information before departing), and there are well-marked walking trails and a seven-mile forest drive through stunning Trossachs scenery.
Other vestiges include the ancient pines of the Black Wood of Rannoch in Highland Perthshire (park at Carie, where you might join the woodland trails; there’s also a peaceful campsite at Kilvrecht, which may reopen during the summer); and the old Atlantic oak woodland along the northern reaches of Loch Sunart (the Alphabet Trail, starting at Salen, offers insight into both local ecology and Gaelic culture).
Learn to recognise ancient woodland by looking out for certain tell-tale signs: trees and boulders wearing heavy fur coats of lichens, liverworts and mosses; a thick and aromatic carpet of wild garlic, bluebells, wood anemones, primroses; trees of all life stages – from reed-thin saplings to big beasts, with bulbous, barrel-like trunks; and the abundance of dead and dying wood littering the ground, returning nutrients to the soil and offering crucial habitats for invertebrates.
But while you’re there, says Wohlleben, don’t forget to stop and listen. Taste the leaves and sink your fingers into the leaf mould. ‘I hope to bring people back to a love of nature,’ he explains. Instil that in our children, and the future of our forests are secure.
Can You Hear the Trees Talking? Discovering the Hidden Life of the Forest by Peter Wohlleben is published by Greystone Kids (£14.99).