PETER WOHLLEBEN
This book, like the other books I am reading this year, had been languishing on my shelf being neglected and gathering dust before I finally picked it up. I had started this book once or twice earlier and dropped it after a few chapters for no particular fault of the book itself.
This was an effortlessly readable book that sheds an empathetic light on trees and forests unlike the other general science literature on similar topics.
The book starts off strong with chapters dedicated to the underground root-fungi network, which has cleverly been dubbed WWW – the Wood Wide Web. It is from this point that the book truly takes root (heh), presenting trees and forests as beings far grander than conventional wisdom would suggest.
There’s a touch of science with a healthy dose of humanism and a pinch of assumptions in each chapter. Sometimes the assumptions are the author’s hopes on the topic, other times they are the “voices” of the trees. A bit of further reading on the internet affirms the view that the factual aspect of the book is not as rigid as I had hoped for, but the sentiment of the author behind those chapters is certainly pure, and I do not hold his hopes against him. I might not directly relate to the sentiment he has associated with trees, but I do respect the care and depth he has gone into for his craft.
I found the chapters about how each species behaves differently in both small and big aspects, trees “talking” to each other, having something akin to mother – child relationships, all of which ensure the survival of the next generations and the forest as a whole to be quite interesting. It would be both horrifying and exciting if we were to find out that trees have always had a sense of consciousness and intellect.
I hope there is an equivalent book on Indian trees and forests, as this book is completely about European forests and tree species. Most of the species mentioned in the book have one or two subgenera in India, and those, too, are presented in the Himalayas or on narrow strips of land bordering China. Once I finished reading the book, I did start noticing a bit more about the trees that grow around me in the city, such as the shape of their trunks, the spread of their branches, the angle by which they lean, and sometimes I felt I could even identify if the tree is in “pain.” I hope to reread this book one day in the future.
Sai Tejas 