Translated from German by Jane Billinghurst
I can’t think of a more appropriate book to have read while hiking through the north-western edges of the Black Forest. At the same time there was something disconcerting about it …..
because as I was gloryifying the beauty, the scale, the sheer magnificence of it all, picking out cool, peaceful resting places and reading spots ….
Wohlleben’s book made me aware that the trees weren’t just basking in the sun, creating shelter and unpolluted oxygen for me to breathe, they were engaged in a battle for their very lives. So those amazing formations – coppiced and ivy-clad trunks, crenelated barks, for example
are symptoms of a battle for survival against predators (ivy), logging or fire (coppiced trunks) or thirst (crenelated bark).
I’m writing from memory here so the diagnoses above may not be exactly right. I found Wohlleben’s book full of the most fascinating facts, and much too much for me to take in on one reading.
Wohlleben is a German forester, who does not view or manage his patch of forest as an exploitable commodity, but as a sustainable one. Forests are families, individual trees do not stand alone. They support each other, sharing food via their roots, when one tree is ailing. They communicate via electrical impulses in the roots, using so-called woodwide web. They nurture their young. Different tree species have different characters. Beeches are bullies. They tower over every other species, depriving pines and oaks of sunlight. (Which is why they have taken over the forests of central Europe.) Willows are loners. (Which is why they do not live for long, in terms of tree age.)
But is a willow a loner as humans understand the term? Or do they just grow alone because the seeds travel so far from the parent tree? Wohlleben uses anthromorphic speech throughout and I will confess there were more than a couple of hang-on-a-minute moments as I was reading. But I decided to ride with it, happy to accept that trees do have a consciousness and that human speech can only describe their experience in terms of our own.
As a result, the book affected me in unexpected ways. In addition to becoming aware of the battles for survival in the seemingly peaceful forest, I began to feel sorry for all the trees lining and beautifying the streets of German cities. Wohlleben calls them the “street kids”, and the chapter on them explains just how rough and ready (and short-lived) their existence is.
The Hidden Life of Trees is definitely an eye-opener, aimed at giving its readership a better understanding and greater respect for our forests. Interestingly, while Wohlleben argues that our forests are best left to their own devices (i.e an undisturbed forest is much healthier than a managed one), he does not argue that we should forgo using them as a resource. But he does want to change our behaviour towards them. To move us towards “helping ourselves only to what we need from the forest ecosystem, and … to spare the trees unnecessary suffering when we do this.”
Which, of course, raises the question of whether there is now any legitimate and guilt-free excuse for me to be adding to Mount TBR … As I said at the beginning, a disconcerting thought. I think I’d rather retrace my tracks for a while …
Lizzy's Literary Life 
I was completely sold on this book – absolutely my kind of thing – until you mentioned the term, ‘woodwide web’ :D. I may still have a look at it, but will err on the side of caution should there be any more moronic puns lurking in the book’s forest of words.
I thought it quite a clever allusion myself, and absolutely appropriate in terms of what is being discussed … I’m saying no more because you have to read it.
Lovely, I am looking forward to this book, which I received through the Asymptote book club.
What an excellent choice they have made!
Oops actually I think it must be a different book. I couldn’t remember the authors name, my Asymptote book is called The Tidings of the Trees.
I love trees. And I have such a complex feeling of guilt when I look at my TBR….
I’m a tree obsessive but I haven’t been able to bring myself to read this because of some of the things you point out. I don’t want to know those beautiful city trees lining our streets are stressed out as it will break my heart 😫
I loved this book – how lucky for you to reading it while in Germany!
I did a few forestry subjects when I was at uni and what I found very interesting was the ecological differences (and similarities) between the types of forests that Wohlleben describes and Australian eucalypt forests – for example, for many eucalypt species, regeneration is triggered by the clearing of the land through bushfire, which is a typical occurrence in the Australian landscape.