The Hidden Life of Trees by Ily Phelps

The Hidden Life of Trees was written by Peter Wohlleben, who was a German forester. I wanted to focus on it because it really opened my mind to a lot of things I didn't really know about trees and the world in general. They have such a slow-paced world where their life is heavily dependent upon each other and I feel like that is a lot like us. So, I'm gonna talk about four different topics and then I have a little takeaway from each one. The first one is friendship. This book starts out with Peter describing a circle of rocks that he found in the forest and he thought that it was like a dead old tree, but he soon discovered that it was still alive. This was without photosynthesis and it's interior had rotted away four to five hundred years ago, so I just asked like how could this be. It turns out that the trees around it were pumping sugars through their connected root system and it kept it alive for hundreds of years. So, it's just saying that together many trees create an ecosystem. Sometimes they can be friends forever, it's really cute. So, my take away is that the stronger relationships that we have, the more storms that we can weather together. The second theme is communication. These trees, they communicate through super slow signals, but this method can only go so far. So, some giraffes are chewing on their leaves, they'd send out the scent and trees downwind could like figure that out and then change their leaves to be more bitter so that the giraffes wouldn't want to eat them, which is kind of crazy. So, that's one way they communicate but this other way is through the signals that are through the roots and they're actually through a series of fungi that's at the roots tips, so it allows them to send little signals to each other if there's something wrong then they can let them know. So, the take away here is any or slow communication is better than no communication. Some trees can live up to thousands of years and the oldest one is 5,062 years old, which is crazy. There's no guarantee that even throughout that amount of time that they're going to survive. The main take away is that growth takes patience. Looking at time through a larger perspective can allow us to take a step back and release some of our problems that seem to be immediate. Last but not least, is memory. One example that Peter cites is the beech tree. They don't start growing unless it's light for at least thirteen hours a day. So, it seems they have some kind of memory. The rising temperatures mean that spraying while fall indicates fall or falling temperatures indicate fall and if a little seedling reaches the ground in the fall it still will wait till spring to start growing. It seems they kind of have brains, I know that's a stretch. It helps them survive and keep surviving and help our forests stay alive for hundreds of years. So, the main take away on this is remember that the world around you is not yours, only. We all share the space and lives with each other. We are pretty small in the grand scheme of life, which hopefully gives you a little more freedom to let the little things go and enjoy the life that you have.