FIVE TAKEAWAYS FROM THE HIDDEN LIFE OF TREES

The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries from a Secret World

The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, a German forest manager, has become an international hit because – who knew – boring old trees are actually amazing! Here are your takeaways: 1 Most nearby trees of the same species are connected through their root systems, and nutrients and information are exchanged, often with the help of fungi. “This connection makes the fungi something like the forest Internet,” Wohlleben writes. ( What are their cat videos like?) Working together is advantageous, and isolated trees tend to suffer, with exceptions such as oaks, which enjoy the lack of competition from other species and can live up to 500 years in farmyards. 2 Trees bloom at the same time to widen the gene pool. Deciduous trees “decide among themselves” whether to bloom in a given year, largely to manage the populations of animals who consume food like beechnuts and acorns. Even so, trees on average produce one successful adult descendant and can take nearly a century to reach sexually maturity (right after a very long awkward phase no doubt). Like people, when trees get old, their crowns thin and they do not grow any taller – just wider. 3 Conifers such as spruce store essential oils in their needles and bark, which act like antifreeze, and their branches can layer when weighted with snow. Deciduous trees protect themselves against winter storms by shedding leaves (though remain vulnerable to ice storms, as many of us remember). In the spring, it seems as though trees can count: they wait until a certain number of warm days has passed before they open up. Beeches, the Linda Evangelista of trees, don’t get out of bed until it is light for at least 13 hours a day. 4 Trees communicate through scent. Acacia trees fill their leaves with a toxin when fed on by giraffes, and send a scent warning to neighbouring trees. Trees can recognize the saliva of specific insects, and even use scent to summon helpful predators. The “fresh scent” of spruce and pine is no myth: a pinch of crushed needles added to water will kill protozoa almost instantly. But be wary of artificial pine air fresheners. Underneath that “pine scent” might still be a whole lotta protozoa. 5 Trees are snowbirds, too. As centuries grow colder, trees “move” to warmer climates. During the last ice age, trees in Central Europe retreated to the Mediterranean, while trees in what is now Toronto rented condos in what is now Fort Lauderdale.