Teaching the Trees: Lessons from the Forest [Paperback]

Joan Maloof (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 25, 2007

In this collection of natural-history essays, biologist Joan Maloof embarks on a series of lively, fact-filled expeditions into forests of the eastern United States. Through Maloof's engaging, conversational style, each essay offers a lesson in stewardship as it explores the interwoven connections between a tree species and the animals and insects whose lives depend on it--and who, in turn, work to ensure the tree's survival.

Never really at home in a laboratory, Maloof took to the woods early in her career. Her enthusiasm for firsthand observation in the wild spills over into her writing, whether the subject is the composition of forest air, the eagle's preference for nesting in loblolly pines, the growth rings of the bald cypress, or the gray squirrel's fondness for weevil-infested acorns. With a storyteller's instinct for intriguing particulars, Maloof expands our notions about what a tree "is" through her many asides--about the six species of leafhoppers who eat only sycamore leaves or the midges who live inside holly berries and somehow prevent them from turning red.

As a scientist, Maloof accepts that trees have a spiritual dimension that cannot be quantified. As an unrepentant tree hugger, she finds support in the scientific case for biodiversity. As an activist, she can't help but wonder how much time is left for our forests.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Trees, the dominant life form of most undisturbed terrestrial ecosystems, get a fitting tribute in this engaging collection of eco-meditations. In each short chapter, Salisbury University naturalist Maloof profiles each familiar tree—from the mighty oak to the humble holly—in the forests near her Maryland home and explores its "magical web of relationships" with the plants, insects, birds, mammals, fungi and people who rely on it. Along the way she gently voices her environmentalist convictions, deploring the clear-cutting of mature forests and their replacement with monoculture pine plantations, urging the use of recycled paper and jousting with county officials who want to cut down a local forest for the timber proceeds (she stymies them by declaring it a "September 11th Memorial Forest" and draping the trees with tags bearing the names of the dead from Ground Zero). Lyrical overtones are provided by sprinkled-in snippets of poetry by Rilke, and illustrations by the 18th-century artist John Abbott add a lovely visual touch. The resulting mix of scientific lore and acute personal observation makes for a beguiling walk in the woods. 18 illus. (July 5)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

"Not so long ago," Maloof notes, "the largest trees lived in the forests, and the trees in parks and yards were modest by comparison; today, in many parts of the world, the tables have turned." Concerned that so few old-growth trees exist, Maloof offers a lovely collection of essays as spur and solace. A meditation on beech trees explores the trees' relationship to red-backed salamanders, the twayblade orchid, and flying squirrels. An essay on maples recalls the years of childhood, when whirly-gigs (maple seeds) rained down from the trees in Maloof's yard. Unexpected details grace the book. The sweet-gum tree, for instance, which doesn't flower until it is 20 years old, produces two types of flowers that bloom simultaneously, and its aromatic sap, prized by the Aztecs, was used as medicine as well as incense. A biologist by training, the author makes good use of poetry and history to demonstrate the connections between the trees and the rest of the planet's inhabitants. A gem. Rebecca Maksel
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: University of Georgia Press (March 25, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 082032955X
• ISBN-13: 978-0820329550
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #641,643 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A plea to keep the trees, October 10, 2005

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Teaching the Trees (Hardcover)

In this slender volume of short essays, gracefully accompanied by the illustrations of 19th century naturalist and artist John Abbot, Maloof makes her impassioned plea for the lives of trees and forests by introducing them to us one by one.

Local rambles in Maryland provide the settings for her meditations on the lives and strategies of common species like beech, oak, maple, pine, and sycamore and under story trees like dogwood and holly, as well as bald cypress, walnut, redcedar, sweetgum and more. She breathes in the special qualities of "old-growth" air and mourns the lack of "grandfather trees," but most fascinating are the tales of interwoven life in the trees.

Many of these have to do with insects. Black locusts produce extra nectar, which feeds the ants and ladybugs that protect the tree from other insects. Except aphids, which the ants protect in exchange for their "honeydew," a euphemism for aphid urine. Ladybugs eat aphids, but there are still plenty of them and that honeydew is also the substance found all over your car when you park it under a tree, that stuff you probably call sap.

Exploring the teeming life of a tree (without the sycamore alone nine other species would be lost) Maloof, a biologist, distills numerous studies and traces the relationships among the insects, lizards, fungi, mammals, birds and people who obtain benefit from the tree. With a winning combination of science and poetry, Maloof makes her case for compassion and wonder.

--Portsmouth Herald

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An environmental awakening., September 7, 2005

By 

Paul Young (South Dennis, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Teaching the Trees (Hardcover)

When I was young, my neighbor told me that when she was a child in early 20th century Philadelphia, she thought that a tree was a particular kind of plant and that was that. Imagine her amazement the first time she left the city and discovered that there were what seemed to be an infinite variety of trees!

Joan Maloof takes the reader to the next level. She explains that far from each tree being merely a unique organism, that each tree is an entire ecosystem; indeed, that each tree is an interdependent universe of organisms that depend on each other in the most unimaginably wonderful and intricate ways.

I have spent my entire life in a rural area surrounded by trees, yet reading this book awakened a new curiosity, a new appreciation, a need to explore and learn that I never felt before.

Anyone will be enriched by reading "Teaching the Trees", but for the young person steeped in consumer culture who thinks that trees are for shade or lumber and that "bugs" are pests, it could be a life-changing experience, leading to an appreciation of the wonders of the forest, and perhaps a lifetime of study and enjoyment of the miracles of nature.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A life changing book!, August 16, 2006

By 

Tiia "always learning more" (Shoreline, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Teaching the Trees (Hardcover)

This is one of those books you read and it can change your life. It's an intellectually beautiful read by a biologist who has spent her life studying the relationship of trees, forests, organisms, insects and animals and explains their connections simply. I think it's an important book such as Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring". It should be in everyone's library and read over and over.

Tiia-Mai Barrett, Seattle, WA