The Secret Life of Trees

[xantho]

I believe that the majority of people who come to visit The Ethnobotanical Garden will enjoy this book so I'm posting about it here. The title is 'The Secret Life of Trees: How They Live and Why They Matter' by Colin Tudge. My sister bought me a copy this weekend and I am finding it very readable and dense with interesting and illuminating facts and thoughts about trees. I highly recommend looking for a copy at your local library or purchasing one if you are able.

Here is the blurb:

What is a tree? As this celebration of trees shows, they are our countryside; our ancestors evolved in them; they gave us air to breathe. Yet while their stories are as plentiful as leaves in a forest, they are rarely told.

Here, Colin Tudge travels back from his own back garden around the world to explore the beauty, variety and ingenuity of trees everywhere: from how they live so long to how they talk to each other and why they came to exist in the first place. Lyrical and evocative, this book will make everyone fall in love with the trees around them.

Just thought I'd share! On a separate note, my home garden is slowly growing and was greatly enhanced by the addition of a young Passiflora edulis[/] last week, much to my delight. B. caapi var. Tukunaka, P. incarnata, P. foetida, P. suberosa, M. longifolia (horse mint), and G. glabra (licorice) seeds should all be arriving in the next few weeks. I don't have a camera but will try to post pics when the garden gets going and a friend comes over with a camera. Happy growing everyone!

 

[nen888]

..sounds like a lovely garden, xantho..

..years of interacting with trees have led me to believe that they feel and even have memory..
entheogenic plants appear to have taught me to respect and propagate their kind..i think this is part of their plan..
it's interesting that flowering plants evolved just prior to and with the rise of intelligent mammals
(there were no flowers in the dinosaur days) ..they began to evolve visual language to communicate with and attract
the coming animals..language in the form of flowers and, i would say, interspecies neurotransmission (entheogens)
...

 

[Dan]

Great find and I'll be looking forward to your garden pics. :d