The Genius of Trees
Harriet Rix
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From the publisher
A mesmerising, mind-expanding global story which shows how trees have learned to use the soil, air, water, plants, fungi, fire, animals and people around them to shape our world - possessing agency beyond anything we might have imagined.
‘Wondrous. Gives us trees as we've never seen them before’ ISABELLA TREE, author of Wilding
'Sublime ... Non-fiction rarely sees a debut like The Genius of Trees. It is a true masterpiece' DAILY TELEGRAPH, 5 Stars
The Genius of Trees tells the mind-expanding global story of the inventive and astonishing ways trees learned to shape our natural world.
Over hundreds of millions of years, from prehistoric forests to the trees around us today, we see trees using fire as a reproductive tool, harnessing large mammals to spread their seeds (but poisoning smaller, less useful mammals), and splitting rock to create fertile ground in barren landscapes.
Because trees, we discover, manipulate fundamental elements, plants, animals, bacteria, fungi, and even humankind to achieve their ends. From the laurel cloud-forests of the Canary Islands to the magnificent sex-shifting oaks of Iraq, from the giant sequoias of California to the carbon-spinning junipers of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border – trees sculpt their environments.
At once transporting and expert, The Genius of Trees gives us hope for the future. It enables us to see trees, for the first time, not as victims but as agents of change in a grand ecological narrative – and as leading actors in the great drama of life on earth.
‘Exceptional’ ROBIN LANE FOX, Financial Times Gardening Columnist
'Full of wonder and revelation ... Highly recommended' SUE STUART-SMITH, author of The Well Gardened Mind
'If I was dazzled by nature and in awe of trees before, I now know how much we are indebted to them’ KIRSTY WARK, Television Presenter & Journalist