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

Book: The Hidden Life Of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries From A Secret World
Author: Peter Wohlleben
Publisher: Allen Lane
Rs 499
Pages xxxi + 319

All of us read in school about Jagadish Bose's discovery that plants, like animals, too had "feelings", and reacted when "hurt". That was back in the early 20th century and must have been a far-fetched idea then. This book by Peter Wohlleben, a German professional "forester", shows how far botany has walked along Bose's premise, how scientists are now starting to understand plants as sentient beings who have a "language" of communication, can "taste" and "smell", nurture their young with a kind of tough "maternal instinct", have a way of pushing back pesky insects and parasites who feed on them and help each other when in trouble.

The science itself is amazing. At the core of it is research published in 1992 by American forest ecologist Suzanne Simard, who found that primeval forests – i.e. "natural" forests undisturbed by man as opposed to "plantation" forests managed for commercial benefit — have a layer of fungus called mycelium under the top soil, which connects individual trees with each other. This layer forms a kind of dense "social" network, that Nature magazine dubbed the "wood wide web", which trees use to exchange nutrients and food, to "support" those sick or weak and to "inform" each other of threats — behaviour that most of us until now had thought was limited to the animal kingdom.

The science is intriguing, but this is no dry scientific book. On the contrary, it's a moving, beautifully-written evocation of the world of trees, indeed, the world inside a tree, by a man who's studied them closely for many decades. Wohlleben had been a member of Germany's forest commission for two decades and now manages the ancient forests around the Eifel Mountain. His long association with trees, his hard-gathered knowledge of how they work and his ability to communicate it to those who know less, shines through in every paragraph.

Trees aren't inert, unmoving "objects" for Wohlleben — they are persons, with will, emotion and intelligence. Take this passage from a chapter titled Tree School: "Thirst is harder for trees to endure than hunger, because they can satisfy their hunger whenever they want. Like a baker who always has enough bread, a tree can satisfy a rumbling stomach right away using photosynthesis. But even the best baker cannot bake without water, and the same goes for a tree."

Wohlleben's message is a simple one: humans need to stop meddling with forests. Plantation forests – rows of trees planted in straight lines with exactly measured distance so that they can be harvested for wood – are an abomination. Trees and forests have inbuilt mechanisms that help them propagate and grow sustainably, to protect themselves from disease and pests. Since science has a yet imperfect understanding of how these work, it's best that they are left to themselves.

The German original was a huge seller when it came out last year, and the English translation has already gathered great reviews. As Pradip Kishen, India's best known tree expert, writes in his introduction to the Indian edition, Wohlleben's book should be made "required reading for every forester in the subcontinent".

Did you know?

Fungii are the biggest organisms on earth. One, a variety called Honey Fungus, found in Switzerland, covers 120 acres and is about 1,000 years old. Another in Oregon is estimated to be 2,400 years old, covers 2,000 acres and weighs 660 tons

The oldest tree in the world is an ancient spruce in Dalarna province in Sweden that's an incredible 9,550 years old

A fifth of all animal and plant species found on the planet depend for nutrition or habitat on dead wood

Electric signals pass along the roots of trees at the rate of one-third an inch per second