It’s safe to say that trees are universally appreciated — but this has not prevented epidemics of deforestation. How do we protect what we all love, and why do we seem unable to? Reading Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees serves to sharpen the sting of this global concern. The book is a bestseller, translated into more than 20 languages, and has clearly struck a chord with an environmentally conscious readership.
And rightly so. There is nothing here that breaks new ground scientifically, but Wohlleben writes appealingly, in the manner of a friend bringing news about friends. In a series of bite-sized chapters, akin to blog-posts, the German forester recounts his experiences with trees that ‘talk’ to each other, look after their children, help the sick, and make personal choices according to their individual characters. The book has no particular structure, but its weight of fascinating anecdotes and observations is bound to impact one’s view of trees. What the book-jacket claims is true: “readers will never be able to take a walk in the woods the same way again”.
So, for example, we learn how oak trees, being nibbled on by insects, will not only release toxins into their bark to put off the attacker, but also inform all the neighbouring trees of the threat, so that they can do the same. Oaks accomplish this communication via underground fungal networks that connect the root-tips of trees — the ‘wood-wide web’. (Other trees, such as the acacia, release scent signals that are carried to their neighbours on the wind.) And the wood-wide web is also used by healthy trees to nourish their sick neighbours with sugar solutions, and by parent trees to feed — or as Wohlleben puts it — ‘to suckle’ their children.
Then there’s friendship. “The average tree grows its branches out until it encounters the branch tips of a neighbouring tree of the same height... The trees don’t want to take anything away from each other; and so they develop sturdy branches only at the outer edges of their crowns, that is to say, only in the direction of ‘non-friends’. Such partners are often so tightly connected at the roots that sometimes they even die together.”
Wohlleben has received some criticism for unduly anthropomorphizing the behaviour of trees. “Scientific language removes all the emotion,” he contends, “and people don’t understand it anymore. When I say, ‘Trees suckle their children,’ everyone knows immediately what I mean.” But at times the criticisms seem justified. “When trees are really thirsty, they begin to scream,” he writes, referring to vibrations in the trunk when the water flow is interrupted.
Wohlleben’s hope is that an enhanced knowledge of tree-life will lead to kinder foresting practices. “It is okay to use wood as long as trees are allowed to live in their species. And that means that they should be allowed to fulfil their social needs, to grow in a true forest environment on undisturbed ground, and to pass their knowledge on to the next generation. And at least some of them should be allowed to grow old with dignity and finally die a natural death.”
This is a perfectly laudable goal. But does merely knowing more about nature, and its closeness to humanity, lessen our exploitation of it? Animals have not been spared mass cruelty despite our great insights into their behaviour and emotions. On the contrary, we use our expertise to make our exploitation more efficient and profitable. Put simply, it does limited good to humanise a tree, while man himself is subservient to profit, in our global economic system. A more vital book than this one would look to topple profit from its godly status in foresting (as elsewhere), in favour of a human/ natural principle. But Wohlleben does not go this far, preferring to note that his own method of managing woodlands is economically profitable. Thereby, he avoids controversy, but also, in the opinion of this reviewer, weakens his book.
The Hidden Life of Trees ; Peter Wohlleben, Penguin Random House India, Rs. 499.
Aditya Sudarshan is a novelistwhose most recent book is The Persecution of Madhav Tripathi.
