FYI there is also an illustrated edition, with cool pictures illustrating cool tree things: https://greystonebooks.com/products/the-hidden-life-of-trees...!

If you like scientific nonfiction in this vein, I'd also recommend:

- The Wild Trees

- Mycelium Running

- Mind of the Raven

- The Klamath Knot

Or if you want tree fiction:

- The Overstory

(edit: dunno how to do bullet lists here)

Thanks for sharing. I knew about The Wild Trees and have The Hidden Life of Trees but was unaware of the others.

Glad you're interested! That genre (narrative nonfiction with a focus on natural science) is an exploding genre, and there are a ton more books that recently came out on everything from otters to octopuses. Those are just the most famous ones and/or ones I've personally read. But it's a really great time to be a nonfiction reader if you enjoy learning about the natural world.

There is a German word that translates as forest death that I cannot recall. It was coined when tree farms became a thing and they quickly learned that creating a monoculture of all the same kind of tree undermined their health.

Trees thrive in a climate of diversity.

We've known for years that trees do things like give off chemicals when insects attack or give off a pulse when chopped into, like a scream not intended for human ears.

Waldsterben, but it's traditionally connected specifically to acid rain.

I'm not readily finding an (English language) origin story online for the term and since it's a German word, searching brings up mostly German resources and my German isn't that good.

Here is an English language piece on forest dieback:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_dieback

I recall the story from some college class I had but my memory isn't what it used to be. Perhaps I'm wrong about the origin story.

Thank you for supplying the word. I always want to say waldtot and I know that's not right.

> I'm not readily finding an (English language) origin story online for the term

FWIW, in English it goes back at least to a Nov. 1983 Financial Times article, by which time the term was apparently very well known in Germany: "A survey conducted in mid-summer by the Allensbach Institute revealed that 99 per cent of those asked had heard of Waldsterben—the death of Germany's forests."

At first I thought the idea of trees (or plants in general) communicating something out of the esoteric corner.

But over time I read quite a bit of interesting reports on scientific experiments showing a few interesting ways plants communicate information towards other plants.

The book added to that. It was really an interesting and mind opening read.

They have collected vast stores of environmental data in their genetic material. I'll bet you real money they know they have to collect water before anyone knows there will be a drought.

>Scientists call these mycorrhizal networks. The fine, hairlike root tips of trees join together with microscopic fungal filaments to form the basic links of the network, which appears to operate as a symbiotic relationship between trees and fungi, or perhaps an economic exchange. As a kind of fee for services, the fungi consume about 30 percent of the sugar that trees photosynthesize from sunlight. The sugar is what fuels the fungi, as they scavenge the soil for nitrogen, phosphorus and other mineral nutrients, which are then absorbed and consumed by the trees.

To me it looks like the fungi are farming the trees. All what is described as cooperation among trees (and seem paradoxical to supposed competition) more fits the fungi's purpose of maximizing of that sugar production (as well as shade and moisture which are key to fungi thriving) on given square footage.

The trees can't force fungi to pass signal nor to transfer nutrition from a healthy to a weak tree. It is fungi who have all the power here and they would take the nutrition from a large healthy tree and pass it to a weak tree to provide for the tree not dying and thus not getting a sunny and dry spot and losing the sugar production from that spot.

More like a biology economy or… ecology.

There are many participants exchanging resources and changing behavior based on how resources are shared. There is evidence of a sense of fairness between participants being maintained, a withholding trader will get less, times of plenty and lean times are “remembered” and understood as normal, not just punished.

There are varying levels of cooperation and adversarial relationships.

You could say the same about our mitochondria

I'd like to learn more about what you're saying. How so?

Try "Entangled Life" by Merlin Sheldrake for more on fungi

I loved this book, finished it like 2 months ago totally worth reading 10/10

It also is/was free on audible if you've got a subscription.

Trees are the top predators of mankind. They have driven a system where people get buried and tree roots eat them and spread the food values via the mycorrhizal network. Sleep well in the arms of Fungius...

It's almost as if life on the planet isn't all about us.

I really enjoyed this book. Recommended for anytime looking to get a slightly deeper look into how forests function, and why trees do what they do when they do.

I like the basic concept that trees [and other plants] can form networks and pass along, via their intertwined root systems, chemical signals in response to changes in their environment etc. But I found the book anthropomorphised to a degree that bordered on ridiculous. Talking of trees feeling "sad" when one of their "friends" died or was cut down was just a bit too cutesy for my liking.

Here's (the?) original research on the mycorrhizal networks, from 1997:

"Net transfer of carbon between ectomycorrhizal tree species in the field" by Suzanne Simard, et. al.

https://www.nature.com/articles/41557

Yes. Magic School Bus already did this episode.

The Ents are coming!