The Hidden Life of Trees, What they feel, how they communicate:Discoveries from a secret world by Peter Wohlleben is a beautiful book and a pleasure to read. Based on Wohlleben years of being a forester and the most recent theories of forest scientists, particularly Dr Suzanne Simard the book explores how particularly ancient forests in Central Europe function. When you look at a forest you see only what is visible to the naked eye, a mass of trees covering the land, as you walk through one the insects; animals, and birdlife, fungus growing on the balk, mushrooms under foot hint at the complexities hidden form the eye. Peter Wohlleben sets out to explain some of the mysteries of an old established forest. The way how as one tree reacts to an insect attack, so do the trees around it, even before the predatory insects arrive , and how trees via their root structure feed younger, or sick trees in their vicinity, equally how a tree will continue to support a tree after its main trunk has dies or fallen. Reading Wohlleben, or for that matter Simard is to discover a whole new perspective on established ancient forests. I did not know that 50% of a forest’s biodiversity exists in the rotting tree trucks of dead trees. The interaction between trees and their neighbours, the soil in which they grow and the life that lives in the soil is fascinating and enlightening. The way the roots structure hold the soil in place and reduce erosion, the leaves that fall and are pulled down intro the soil and broken down by the worms, insects and microbes in the soil, enriching and enhancing the soil itself.

The mutually supporting nature of what has been called the wood wide web is a far cry from the tooth and claw school of the Darwinist survival of the fittest types. As well as the wood wide web it has also been called the socialism of the forest, naturally enraging the more traditionalist and neo conservative wing of naturalists. Science is not an ideological free zone and the debates within it are as vivacious and personal as any political discourse, just with a few more facts and peer reviews to keep it grounded. Wohlleben book, while being wildly popular across the world amongst the green inclined middle classes has got up the backs of many a scientists. It is not difficult to see why, the ascribing of human type emotions to trees I first found endearing, as an attempt to create empathy with its readers, but I have to admit it quickly became annoying. In the end I found it a barrier to actually understanding forests and how they work. Trees are not human like and humans are not trees. Simard, who’s work Wohlleben draws extensively on, has primarily come up with a theory to explain what she has found about trees interact with their environment and with each other. It is oen I find very attractive and , given ly political beliefs, one I would like to believe. However it is just that, a theory, it needs, yes as usual, a lot more research to prove, or disprove it. What the book does show is how humans, despite living in and alongside trees and forests, have only scratched the surface, literally, on understanding how they live and work.