Brain Pickings Icon Brain Pickings

loving = donating
Brain Pickings remains free (and ad-free) and takes me hundreds of hours a month to
research and write, and thousands of dollars to sustain.

If you find any joy and value in what I do, please consider becoming a Sustaining
Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and
a good lunch:

MONTHLY DONATION
? $3 / month

? $5 / month

? $7 / month

? $10 / month

? $25 / month

START NOW
ONE-TIME DONATION
You can also become a Spontaneous Supporter with a one-time donation in any amount:

GIVE NOW
Need to cancel a recurring donation? Go here.

newsletter
Lift your heart every Sunday morning with the free Brain Pickings newsletter � a
digest of the week's most interesting and inspiring articles. Here's an example.
Like? Claim yours:

Name

Email Address

ABOUT CONTACT
SUPPORT
SUBSCRIBE
Newsletter RSS
CONNECT
Facebook Twitter Instagram Tumblr
also
live events
live events
bookshelf
literary jukebox
original art
sounds
bites
archives

SEARCH

SURPRISE ME
favorite reads
In Praise of the Telescopic Perspective: A Reflection on Living Through Turbulent
Times
In Praise of the Telescopic Perspective: A Reflection on Living Through Turbulent
Times
The Best of Brain Pickings 2017
The Best of Brain Pickings 2017
The Courage to Be Yourself: E.E. Cummings on Art, Life, and Being Unafraid to Feel
The Courage to Be Yourself: E.E. Cummings on Art, Life, and Being Unafraid to Feel
7 Favorite Science Books of 2017
7 Favorite Science Books of 2017
The 7 Loveliest Children's Books of 2017
The 7 Loveliest Children�s Books of 2017
A Stoic's Key to Peace of Mind: Seneca on the Antidote to Anxiety
A Stoic�s Key to Peace of Mind: Seneca on the Antidote to Anxiety
10 Learnings from 10 Years of Brain Pickings
10 Learnings from 10 Years of Brain Pickings
The Writing of "Silent Spring": Rachel Carson and the Culture-Shifting Courage to
Speak Inconvenient Truth to Power
The Writing of �Silent Spring�: Rachel Carson and the Culture-Shifting Courage to
Speak Inconvenient Truth to Power
Timeless Advice on Writing: The Collected Wisdom of Great Writers
Timeless Advice on Writing: The Collected Wisdom of Great Writers
A Rap on Race: Margaret Mead and James Baldwin's Rare Conversation on Forgiveness
and the Difference Between Guilt and Responsibility
A Rap on Race: Margaret Mead and James Baldwin�s Rare Conversation on Forgiveness
and the Difference Between Guilt and Responsibility
Mary Oliver on What Attention Really Means and Her Moving Elegy for Her Soul Mate
Mary Oliver on What Attention Really Means and Her Moving Elegy for Her Soul Mate
Rebecca Solnit on Hope in Dark Times, Resisting the Defeatism of Easy Despair, and
What Victory Really Means for Movements of Social Change
Rebecca Solnit on Hope in Dark Times, Resisting the Defeatism of Easy Despair, and
What Victory Really Means for Movements of Social Change
The Science of Stress and How Our Emotions Affect Our Susceptibility to Burnout and
Disease
The Science of Stress and How Our Emotions Affect Our Susceptibility to Burnout and
Disease
Against Self-Criticism: Adam Phillips on How Our Internal Critics Enslave Us, the
Stockholm Syndrome of the Superego, and the Power of Multiple Interpretations
Against Self-Criticism: Adam Phillips on How Our Internal Critics Enslave Us, the
Stockholm Syndrome of the Superego, and the Power of Multiple Interpretations
The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone
The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone
Susan Sontag on Storytelling, What It Means to Be a Moral Human Being, and Her
Advice to Writers
Susan Sontag on Storytelling, What It Means to Be a Moral Human Being, and Her
Advice to Writers
Leisure, the Basis of Culture: An Obscure German Philosopher's Timely 1948
Manifesto for Reclaiming Our Human Dignity in a Culture of Workaholism
Leisure, the Basis of Culture: An Obscure German Philosopher�s Timely 1948
Manifesto for Reclaiming Our Human Dignity in a Culture of Workaholism
Fixed vs. Growth: The Two Basic Mindsets That Shape Our Lives
Fixed vs. Growth: The Two Basic Mindsets That Shape Our Lives
Friedrich Nietzsche on Why a Fulfilling Life Requires Embracing Rather than Running
from Difficulty
Friedrich Nietzsche on Why a Fulfilling Life Requires Embracing Rather than Running
from Difficulty
SEE MORE
related reads
The Songs of Trees: A Biologist�s Lyrical Ode to How Relationships Weave the Fabric
of Life
The Songs of Trees: A Biologist�s Lyrical Ode to How Relationships Weave the Fabric
of Life
The Wisdom of Trees: Walt Whitman on What Our Silent Friends Teach Us About Being
Rather Than Seeming
The Wisdom of Trees: Walt Whitman on What Our Silent Friends Teach Us About Being
Rather Than Seeming
What Trees Teach Us About Human Nature, Relationships, and the Secret to Lasting
Love: Wisdom from a 17th-Century Gardener
What Trees Teach Us About Human Nature, Relationships, and the Secret to Lasting
Love: Wisdom from a 17th-Century Gardener
labors of love
Famous Writers' Sleep Habits vs. Literary Productivity, Visualized

7 Life-Learnings from 7 Years of Brain Pickings, Illustrated

Ana�s Nin on Love, Hand-Lettered by Debbie Millman

Ana�s Nin on Real Love, Illustrated by Debbie Millman

Susan Sontag on Love: Illustrated Diary Excerpts

Susan Sontag on Art: Illustrated Diary Excerpts

Albert Camus on Happiness and Love, Illustrated by Wendy MacNaughton

The Holstee Manifesto

The Silent Music of the Mind: Remembering Oliver Sacks

The Secret Life of Trees: The Astonishing Science of What Trees Feel and How They
Communicate
�A tree can be only as strong as the forest that surrounds it.�
BY MARIA POPOVA
The Secret Life of Trees: The Astonishing Science of What Trees Feel and How They
Communicate

Trees dominate the world�s the oldest living organisms. Since the dawn of our
species, they have been our silent companions, permeating our most enduring tales
and never ceasing to inspire fantastical cosmogonies. Hermann Hesse called them
�the most penetrating of preachers.� A forgotten seventeenth-century English
gardener wrote of how they �speak to the mind, and tell us many things, and teach
us many good lessons.�

But trees might be among our lushest metaphors and sensemaking frameworks for
knowledge precisely because the richness of what they say is more than metaphorical
� they speak a sophisticated silent language, communicating complex information via
smell, taste, and electrical impulses. This fascinating secret world of signals is
what German forester Peter Wohlleben explores in The Hidden Life of Trees: What
They Feel, How They Communicate (public library).

Wohlleben chronicles what his own experience of managing a forest in the Eifel
mountains in Germany has taught him about the astonishing language of trees and how
trailblazing arboreal research from scientists around the world reveals �the role
forests play in making our world the kind of place where we want to live.� As we�re
only just beginning to understand nonhuman consciousnesses, what emerges from
Wohlleben�s revelatory reframing of our oldest companions is an invitation to see
anew what we have spent eons taking for granted and, in this act of seeing, to care
more deeply about these remarkable beings that make life on this planet we call
home not only infinitely more pleasurable, but possible at all.
Illustration by Arthur Rackham for a rare 1917 edition of the Brothers Grimm fairy
tales
But Wohlleben�s own career began at the opposite end of the caring spectrum. As a
forester tasked with optimizing the forest�s output for the lumber industry, he
self-admittedly �knew about as much about the hidden life of trees as a butcher
knows about the emotional life of animals.� He experienced the consequence of what
happens whenever we turn something alive, be it a creature or a work of art, into a
commodity � the commercial focus of his job warped how he looked at trees.

Then, about twenty years ago, everything changed when he began organizing survival
training and log-cabin tours for tourists in his forest. As they marveled at the
majestic trees, the enchanted curiosity of their gaze reawakened his own and his
childhood love of nature was rekindled. Around the same time, scientists began
conducting research in his forest. Soon, every day became colored with wonderment
and the thrill of discovery � no longer able to see trees as a currency, he instead
saw them as the priceless living wonders that they are. He recounts:

Life as a forester became exciting once again. Every day in the forest was a day of
discovery. This led me to unusual ways of managing the forest. When you know that
trees experience pain and have memories and that tree parents live together with
their children, then you can no longer just chop them down and disrupt their lives
with large machines.

The revelation came to him in flashes, the most eye-opening of which happened on
one of his regular walks through a reserve of old beech tree in his forest. Passing
by a patch of odd mossy stones he had seen many times before, he was suddenly
seized with a new awareness of their strangeness. When he bent down to examine
them, he made an astonishing discovery:

The stones were an unusual shape: they were gently curved with hollowed-out areas.
Carefully, I lifted the moss on one of the stones. What I found underneath was tree
bark. So, these were not stones, after all, but old wood. I was surprised at how
hard the �stone� was, because it usually takes only a few years for beechwood lying
on damp ground to decompose. But what surprised me most was that I couldn�t lift
the wood. It was obviously attached to the ground in some way. I took out my
pocketknife and carefully scraped away some of the bark until I got down to a
greenish layer. Green? This color is found only in chlorophyll, which makes new
leaves green; reserves of chlorophyll are also stored in the trunks of living
trees. That could mean only one thing: this piece of wood was still alive! I
suddenly noticed that the remaining �stones� formed a distinct pattern: they were
arranged in a circle with a diameter of about 5 feet. What I had stumbled upon were
the gnarled remains of an enormous ancient tree stump. All that was left were
vestiges of the outermost edge. The interior had completely rotted into humus long
ago � a clear indication that the tree must have been felled at least four or five
hundred years earlier.

How can a tree cut down centuries ago could still be alive? Without leaves, a tree
is unable to perform photosynthesis, which is how it converts sunlight into sugar
for sustenance. The ancient tree was clearly receiving nutrients in some other way
� for hundreds of years.

Beneath the mystery lay a fascinating frontier of scientific research, which would
eventually reveal that this tree was not unique in its assisted living. Neighboring
trees, scientists found, help each other through their root systems � either
directly, by intertwining their roots, or indirectly, by growing fungal networks
around the roots that serve as a sort of extended nervous system connecting
separate trees. If this weren�t remarkable enough, these arboreal mutualities are
even more complex � trees appear able to distinguish their own roots from those of
other species and even of their own relatives.

Art by Judith Clay from Thea�s Tree

Wohlleben ponders this astonishing sociality of trees, abounding with wisdom about
what makes strong human communities and societies:

Why are trees such social beings? Why do they share food with their own species and
sometimes even go so far as to nourish their competitors? The reasons are the same
as for human communities: there are advantages to working together. A tree is not a
forest. On its own, a tree cannot establish a consistent local climate. It is at
the mercy of wind and weather. But together, many trees create an ecosystem that
moderates extremes of heat and cold, stores a great deal of water, and generates a
great deal of humidity. And in this protected environment, trees can live to be
very old. To get to this point, the community must remain intact no matter what. If
every tree were looking out only for itself, then quite a few of them would never
reach old age. Regular fatalities would result in many large gaps in the tree
canopy, which would make it easier for storms to get inside the forest and uproot
more trees. The heat of summer would reach the forest floor and dry it out. Every
tree would suffer.

Every tree, therefore, is valuable to the community and worth keeping around for as
long as possible. And that is why even sick individuals are supported and nourished
until they recover. Next time, perhaps it will be the other way round, and the
supporting tree might be the one in need of assistance.

[�]

A tree can be only as strong as the forest that surrounds it.

One can�t help but wonder whether trees are so much better equipped at this mutual
care than we are because of the different time-scales on which our respective
existences play out. Is some of our inability to see this bigger picture of shared
sustenance in human communities a function of our biological short-sightedness? Are
organisms who live on different time scales better able to act in accordance with
this grander scheme of things in a universe that is deeply interconnected?

To be sure, even trees are discriminating in their kinship, which they extend in
varying degrees. Wohlleben explains:

Every tree is a member of this community, but there are different levels of
membership. For example, most stumps rot away into humus and disappear within a
couple of hundred years (which is not very long for a tree). Only a few individuals
are kept alive over the centuries� What�s the difference? Do tree societies have
second-class citizens just like human societies? It seems they do, though the idea
of �class� doesn�t quite fit. It is rather the degree of connection � or maybe even
affection � that decides how helpful a tree�s colleagues will be.

These relationships, Wohlleben points out, are encoded in the forest canopy and
visible to anyone who simply looks up:

The average tree grows its branches out until it encounters the branch tips of a
neighboring tree of the same height. It doesn�t grow any wider because the air and
better light in this space are already taken. However, it heavily reinforces the
branches it has extended, so you get the impression that there�s quite a shoving
match going on up there. But a pair of true friends is careful right from the
outset not to grow overly thick branches in each other�s direction. The trees don�t
want to take anything away from each other, and so they develop sturdy branches
only at the outer edges of their crowns, that is to say, only in the direction of
�non-friends.� Such partners are often so tightly connected at the roots that
sometimes they even die together.

Art by C�cile Gambini from Strange Trees by Bernadette Pourqui�

But trees don�t interact with one another in isolation from the rest of the
ecosystem. The substance of their communication, in fact, is often about and even
to other species. Wohlleben describes their particularly remarkable olfactory
warning system:

Four decades ago, scientists noticed something on the African savannah. The
giraffes there were feeding on umbrella thorn acacias, and the trees didn�t like
this one bit. It took the acacias mere minutes to start pumping toxic substances
into their leaves to rid themselves of the large herbivores. The giraffes got the
message and moved on to other trees in the vicinity. But did they move on to trees
close by? No, for the time being, they walked right by a few trees and resumed
their meal only when they had moved about 100 yards away.

The reason for this behavior is astonishing. The acacia trees that were being eaten
gave off a warning gas (specifically, ethylene) that signaled to neighboring trees
of the same species that a crisis was at hand. Right away, all the forewarned trees
also pumped toxins into their leaves to prepare themselves. The giraffes were wise
to this game and therefore moved farther away to a part of the savannah where they
could find trees that were oblivious to what was going on. Or else they moved
upwind. For the scent messages are carried to nearby trees on the breeze, and if
the animals walked upwind, they could find acacias close by that had no idea the
giraffes were there.

Because trees operate on time scales dramatically more extended than our own, they
operate far more slowly than we do � their electrical impulses crawl at the speed
of a third of an inch per minute. Wohlleben writes:

Beeches, spruce, and oaks all register pain as soon as some creature starts
nibbling on them. When a caterpillar takes a hearty bite out of a leaf, the tissue
around the site of the damage changes. In addition, the leaf tissue sends out
electrical signals, just as human tissue does when it is hurt. However, the signal
is not transmitted in milliseconds, as human signals are; instead, the plant signal
travels at the slow speed of a third of an inch per minute. Accordingly, it takes
an hour or so before defensive compounds reach the leaves to spoil the pest�s meal.
Trees live their lives in the really slow lane, even when they are in danger. But
this slow tempo doesn�t mean that a tree is not on top of what is happening in
different parts of its structure. If the roots find themselves in trouble, this
information is broadcast throughout the tree, which can trigger the leaves to
release scent compounds. And not just any old scent compounds, but compounds that
are specifically formulated for the task at hand.

The upside of this incapacity for speed is that there is no need for blanket
alarmism � the recompense of trees� inherent slowness is an extreme precision of
signal. In addition to smell, they also use taste � each species produces a
different kind of �saliva,� which can be infused with different pheromones targeted
at warding off a specific predator.

Wohlleben illustrates the centrality of trees in Earth�s ecosystem with a story

about Yellowstone National Park that demonstrates �how our appreciation for trees
affects the way we interact with the world around us�:

It all starts with the wolves. Wolves disappeared from Yellowstone, the world�s
first national park, in the 1920s. When they left, the entire ecosystem changed.
Elk herds in the park increased their numbers and began to make quite a meal of the
aspens, willows, and cottonwoods that lined the streams. Vegetation declined and
animals that depended on the trees left. The wolves were absent for seventy years.
When they returned, the elks� languorous browsing days were over. As the wolf packs
kept the herds on the move, browsing diminished, and the trees sprang back. The
roots of cottonwoods and willows once again stabilized stream banks and slowed the
flow of water. This, in turn, created space for animals such as beavers to return.
These industrious builders could now find the materials they needed to construct
their lodges and raise their families. The animals that depended on the riparian
meadows came back, as well. The wolves turned out to be better stewards of the land
than people, creating conditions that allowed the trees to grow and exert their
influence on the landscape.

Art by William Grill from The Wolves of Currumpaw

This interconnectedness isn�t limited to regional ecosystems. Wohlleben cites the
work of Japanese marine chemist Katsuhiko Matsunaga, who discovered that trees
falling into a river can change the acidity of the water and thus stimulate the
growth of plankton � the elemental and most significant building block of the
entire food chain, on which our own sustenance depends.

In the remainder of The Hidden Life of Trees, Wohlleben goes on to explore such
fascinating aspects of arboreal communication as how trees pass wisdom down to the
next generation through their seeds, what makes them live so long, and how forests
handle immigrants. Complement it with this wonderful illustrated atlas of the
world�s strangest trees and an 800-year visual history of trees as symbolic
diagrams.

donating = loving
Each week of the past eleven years, I have poured tremendous time, thought, love,
and resources into Brain Pickings, which remains free (and ad-free) and is made
possible by patronage. If you find any joy and stimulation here, please consider
supporting my labor of love by becoming a Sustaining Patron with a recurring
monthly donation, between a cup of tea and a Brooklyn lunch. And if you already
donate, from the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU.

MONTHLY DONATION
? $3 / month

? $5 / month

? $7 / month

? $10 / month

? $25 / month

START NOW
ONE-TIME DONATION
You can also become a Spontaneous Supporter with a one-time donation in any amount:

GIVE NOW
newsletter
Brain Pickings has a free Sunday digest of the week's most interesting and
inspiring articles. Here's an example. Like? Claim yours:

Name
Email Address

BPPRINT ARTICLE
EMAIL ARTICLE
SHARE ARTICLE

FILED UNDER
BOOKSCULTURESCIENCE
Brain Pickings participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an
affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn
commissions by linking to Amazon. In more human terms, this means that whenever you
buy a book on Amazon from a link on here, I get a small percentage of its price.
That helps support Brain Pickings by offsetting a fraction of what it takes to
maintain the site, and is very much appreciated

Sumo
Focus Retriever