WHY DID THE GOAT

MY PARENTS shared a passion for plants and they inspired my brother and me with beauty and botany.We grew up near the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, west London, where virtually every story about a plant was part of a wider one about animals or people.

This tree was used for deadly poison, that one for chocolate, another to insulate the communications cables that criss-cross the Earth.

The world’s trees are astonishingly diverse – we now know that there are at least 60,000 distinct species.

One of my earliest memories is of a spectacular cedar of Lebanon, near our home. One winter morning we found it dead, its trunk and limbs strewn haphazardly and being sawn up. It had been struck by lightning.

That was the first time I saw my father cry. I thought about the huge, heavy, beautiful thing that was hundreds of years old and that I had thought invincible. I recall my mother saying that there had been a whole world in that tree. She was right.

There was a whole world in that tree, and so there is in every tree.They warrant our appreciation, and many need our protection.

●●Extracted from Around the World in 80 Trees by Jonathan Drori, illustrated by Lucille Clerc, (Laurence King Publishing, £12.99). For free UK delivery, call Express Bookshop on 01872 562310 or order via expressbookshop.co.uk

ENGLAND:

WITH large, maple-like leaves and towering height, the London plane is a tree of pomp and circumstance, a symbol of a nation at the height of its powers.

The branches begin high up the trunk so mature trees have a lofty, architectural quality, giving plenty of shade without restricting the view at street level.

Planted throughout London in the 19th century to complement the city’s imposing squares and thoroughfares, the plane was the ideal symbol for the capital of a growing empire.

Here was the centre of a powerful, industrialised country, stable and confident enough to plan a century ahead.

The Industrial Revolution left London black with soot. Few species could survive such

BORNEO: insult, but the London plane is especially well adapted to urban life.

Its bark is brittle and, because it cannot adapt to the fast growth of the trunk, drops off in flakes the size of a baby’s hand.

The pleasingly random dappling left behind resembles camouflage. The bark of many trees is dotted with tiny pores called lenticels that allow the exchange of gases.

If these become clogged, the tree suffers.

The ability of the plane to slough off a layer of grime it has removed from the atmosphere helps to keep this city dweller and its human companions healthy. Today, the London plane makes up more than half of the capital’s trees, shading streets and squares, lining the Thames and populating the Royal parks.

GUTTA-PERCHA

DURING the second half of the 19th century the gutta-percha changed the world.

Native to Sumatra, Borneo and the Malay peninsula, it grows tall and straight with few branches or leaves.

The name derives from the Malay term for its greyish-white latex. When heated to 150–160F it can be moulded, retaining its shape as it cools.

Indigenous people had used gutta-percha for centuries when, in 1843, a British surgeon sent samples to London. It quickly became the modern wonder material.

Resistant to seawater and an excellent electrical insulator, Werner von Siemens invented a way to coat copper telegraph wires with gutta-percha.

By the end of the 19th century more than 250 million miles of cable girdled the Earth, carrying the hubbub of commerce, diplomacy and journalism.

MOROCCO: ARGAN

THE argan is found in south-western Morocco and parts of Algeria, where its deep roots stabilise arid soil, a last bastion against the Sahara.Typical of semi-desert trees, it is slow-growing and thorny as hell, the better to repel hungry herbivores.

It is all the more surprising, then – not to mention surreal – to see goats aloft in its branches. But these especially nimble animals have learned to avoid the thorns and leaves to seize the fruit – a golden oval the size of a small plum.

In the centre is a nut, hard as nails, protecting one or two small, oil-rich seeds.

It is the resulting argan oil, used for food and cosmetics, that is the mainstay of the local economy. But extra income from oil exports is not necessarily good for the trees because, when business booms, a traditional store of wealth in the region is… goats.

Despite their jolly appearance, when too many turn their attention from the fruit to the leaves they can do much damage.