Book Review: The Hidden Life Of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries From A Secret World by Peter Wohlleben

Wohlleben is a forester who’s been working on more sustainable and harmonious ways of managing woodland, especially beech forests, and is keen to share the insights thus gleaned.

The key from which much here follows is thinking of forests not as a collection of trees engaged in all-out competition for sunlight and water, but as a mutually supportive network, exchanging information and even nutrients via subterranean networks of fungal symbiotes (inevitably described as “the forest internet” – the chummy anthropomorphism can grow wearying, as too the corny jokes, which in fairness may have been less groanworthy in the original German).

It’s a fascinating vision, even if it’s never entirely clear how trees know whether another trunk is a ‘friend’ with whom to cooperate, or a sibling with whom he admits they fight for resources. It can get a bit cloying in large doses, but dipped into, it’s full of intriguing facts.

Published by Greystone Books