The Hidden Life of Trees

Maudslay State Park courtesy of Sarah Pflaum

     If you are looking for a holiday gift for a treehugger friend or family member, consider buying The Hidden Life of Trees by  Peter Wohlleben.  National Public Radio interviewed the author last month ( click NPR interview with author )   Many of us choose to live in Newburyport not just because of its historical charm and proximity to the ocean but for the sense of community absent in so many other towns and cities in Massachusetts. We have close knit neighborhoods, walkable streets, establishments you can visit where you are likely to see people you know. It's  a town with a very high level of civic engagement.  According to Wohlleben, trees also connect with one another through an underground fiber optic system of sorts and support each other's growth and well-being, much like strong social ties do for all of us. As we enter an era of continued extreme and unpredictable weather, we may someday need to share commodities  and even house one another in the aftermath of a disastrous future storm. Even our own survival may depend on the communities we have created.
     The following excerpt from page 3 sums it up well. "But 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 can not establish a consistent local climate. 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 for only 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."
   Other recommended tree related readings from your Newburyport Tree Commission and Friends of Newburyport Trees members that would also make excellent holiday gifts are Urban Forests by Jill Jones; The Long, Long Life of Trees by Fiona Stafford; A Natural History of N.American Trees by Donald Curls Beattie and The Tree by John Fowles.  If you are tired of getting the ugly sweater every year, you might even ask your family members to make a charitable gift to FONT instead, or consider donating a Memorial Tree to honor a loved one.  Learn how on our website at www.fontrees.org.  Donations can be sent to FONT, P.O. Box 1155, Newburyport, MA 01950.