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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
FOR ALL TREE-NATURE LOVERS, NOT JUST FORESTERS AND TREE GROWERS, January 26, 2010
This review is from: Lives of the Trees: An Uncommon History (Hardcover)
Diana Wells gives readers historical and endearing facts about trees, not just the scientific details. There is a bit of that, but not enough to call it a field guide for identification. This is for the literary enjoyment of those in tune with trees and wishing more facts about the character of individual trees. Their personality.
"LIVES OF THE TREES" includes much about name origins, folklore, alternate names, and past uses of the trees or their parts. 100 different tree chapters describe specie roots nearly lost or unknown facts about the different types. For example honey bees were brought to North America to pollinate apple trees. The bees became known as "White Man's Flies" by the Native American Indians. And their is a connection to the American Red Bud tree from the Judas Tree. There are antidotes of relationships with different trees to Biblical scriptures, Shakespeare writings, Greek & Roman culture, and so much more.
This is by far the most interesting non-fiction tree book I have ever read. Of course my reading went instantly to recognizable tree names of the USA Midwest, where I live. Found were fascinating facts never heard or read elsewhere. Then, returning to page one, a trip through pages of trees seen in other areas, finding delightful reading so much more interesting than the typical educational or scientific dry stuff provided for those seriously growing trees.
Book also includes Heather Lovett drawings of leaves and fruit/nut/seed pod for each variety. A wonderful 1/2 page illustration on every 2nd or 3rd page. There is a bibliography for the more serious tree specialist and an index for finding those bits of interest you'll be telling your friends about, or reading to them. Better yet, if you have a nature friend, buy them a copy. You'll be endeared to them forever.
Highly recommended nature/tree book for readers. I recommend sitting on the roots of a tree, with the trunk for a backrest, while enjoying Wells' "Uncommon History" of bark, limbs, and leaves.
Now after reading about 100 trees, I must take a look at Diana Wells' books: "100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names" and "100 Birds and How They Got Their Names". I suspect they are as fun a read as "LIVES OF THE TREES".
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
More a Common History, March 6, 2010
This review is from: Lives of the Trees: An Uncommon History (Hardcover)
Diana Wells' Lives of the Trees is a fine book. I believe it to be well researched. Every chapter has interesting comments on a species or family of trees. The chapters are, however, short. I was expecting more in-depth reporting of the trees than in books that I currently own. Not certain why that expectation was there except I had read a very positive review and my hopes were high. Too high, in fact. A glance at Ms. Wells' bibliography shows that her subject is well researched, but one book there, Don Peattie's A Natural History of Trees, which I currently own and treasure, shows the limitations of her work. Where Peattie's writing is eloquent and poetic at times (indeed I challenge anyone to point to a better writer of non-fiction) Well's is prosaic and common. Also, at least so far in my reading, every interesting aspect of Wells' book is already in Peattie's. Many details of Peattie's book, however, are absent from Wells'. For instance, in the chapter on Cherry, Wells does not even discuss the Black Cherry, that most august, and beautiful of cabinet woods. She speaks of the blossoms in Japan, the fruit of the Bing, but not one of the most treasured hardwoods in our forest. I am flummoxed as to why.
So why not just get Peattie's? Of course you could have both, as I have. But if you only want one, make it Peattie's.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Meet 100 interesting trees, February 7, 2010
This review is from: Lives of the Trees: An Uncommon History (Hardcover)
Diana Wells has a gift for uncovering facts about trees, many of them new to me despite a life long interest in the natural world. The trees run the gamut from acacia to yew, and with lots of interesting information in between.
For example, the Welwitschia, a tree that grows only in the Namib desert within Namibia and Angola. Welwitschia grows from a short, thick, woody trunk, with only two leaves that continuously grow from their base, and a long, thick taproot. It is named for its discoverer, an Austrian named Friedrich Martin Josef Welwitsch, who won a measure of fame in 1859 when he announced its existence.
William Wordsworth remembered that "[w]hen I was a child at Cockermouth, no funeral took place without a basin filled with sprigs of boxwood being placed upon a table covered with a white cloth in front of the house."
"Fresh sprigs of green box-wood, not six months before,
Filled the funeral basin at Timothy's door;
A coffin through Timothy's threshold had past;
One Child did it bear, and that Child was his last."
This is not a formal guide to trees nor written for scientists; as Wells writes: "This book is not for botanists or dendrologists or taxonomists or even for those who want to identify individual trees. It is a book for non-experts like me."
Wells believes that "it would help us if we were more familiar with the trees because in the past people were very familiar with trees. Nowadays, you can get somebody living on a street named after a tree and they've never really seen the tree. It's just a street name. And I think if we did that, it would cement the bond, which has got a little loose, between us, and it would help all of us."
She rises to the poetical at times: ""Because they are larger and older than we can ever hope to be, because they give shade, wood, food, and shelter, and because they stretch from earth to heaven, trees have been our gods since before recorded time."
It was great fun to learn a great deal more about these wonderful plants, and Wells delivers the information in a very lively and interesting way.
Robert C. Ross 2010
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