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The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate―Discoveries from A Secret World (The Mysteries of Nature, 1) Hardcover – September 13, 2016
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A NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER • One of the most beloved books of our time: an illuminating account of the forest, and the science that shows us how trees communicate, feel, and live in social networks. After reading this book, a walk in the woods will never be the same again.
“Breaks entirely new ground ... [Peter Wohlleben] has listened to trees and decoded their language. Now he speaks for them.”—The New York Review of Books
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BRAINPICKINGS • HONORABLE MENTION: SEJ Rachel Carson Environment Book Award • Shortlisted: Audible International Book of the Year Award • Books For a Better Life Award • Indie Choice Award—Nonfiction Book of the Year
Are trees social beings? In The Hidden Life of Trees forester and author Peter Wohlleben convincingly makes the case that, yes, the forest is a social network. He draws on groundbreaking scientific discoveries to describe how trees are like human families: tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, support them as they grow, share nutrients with those who are sick or struggling, and even warn each other of impending dangers. Wohlleben also shares his deep love of woods and forests, explaining the amazing processes of life, death, and regeneration that he has observed in his woodland.
“A declaration of love and an engrossing primer on trees, brimming with facts and an unashamed awe for nature.”—Washington Post
“Heavily dusted with the glitter of wonderment.”—The New Yorker
Includes a Note From a Forest Scientist by Dr.Suzanne Simard
Published in Partnership with the David Suzuki Institute
- Print length288 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherGreystone Books
- Publication dateSeptember 13, 2016
- Dimensions5.5 x 1 x 8 inches
- ISBN-101771642483
- ISBN-13978-1771642484
- Lexile measure1110L
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But together, many trees create an ecosystem that moderates extremes of heat and cold, stores a great deal of water, and generates a great deal of humidity. And in this protected environment, trees can live to be very old.Highlighted by 3,801 Kindle readers
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For if they can identify saliva, they must also have a sense of taste.Highlighted by 2,508 Kindle readers
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Warmly avuncular, storybook simple, and heavily dusted with the glitter of wonderment.”
—The New Yorker
“The matter-of-fact Mr. Wohlleben has delighted readers and talk-show audiences alike with the news — long known to biologists — that trees in the forest are social beings.”
—Sally McGrane, The New York Times
“This fascinating book will intrigue readers who love a walk through the woods.”
—Publishers Weekly
“If you read this book, I believe that forests will become magical places for you, too.”
—Tim Flannery
“In this spirited exploration, [Wohlleben] guarantees that readers will never look at these life forms in quite the same way again.”
—Library Journal
“A paradigm-smashing chronicle of joyous entanglement that will make you joyously acknowledge your own entanglement in the ancient and ever-new web of being.”
—Charles Foster, author of Being a Beast: Adventures Across the Species Divide
“Soon after we begin to recognize trees for what they are — gigantic beings thriving against incredible odds for hundreds of years — we naturally come to ask, 'How do they do it?' This charming book tells how — not as a lecture, more like a warm conversation with a favorite friend.”
—Hope Jahren, author of Lab Girl
“A powerful reminder to slow down and tune into the language of nature.”
—Rachel Sussman, author of The Oldest Living Things in the World
“Charming, provocative, fascinating. In the tradition of Jean-Henri Fabre and other great naturalist story-tellers, Wohlleben relates imaginative, enthralling tales of ecology.”
—David George Haskell, author of The Forest Unseen, Pulitzer finalist
“Wohlleben’s book is at once romantic and scientific, beautifully articulating his personal relationship with the trees he has dedicated his life to. His view of the forest calls on us all to reevaluate our relationships with the plant world.”
—Daniel Chamovitz, PhD, author of What a Plant Knows
“With colorful and engaging descriptions of little-known phenomena in our natural world, Wohlleben helps readers appreciate the exciting processes at work in the forests around them.”
—Dr. Richard Karban, University of California, Davis, author of Plant Sensing and Communication
“You will never look at a tree the same way after reading Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees, which reveals the mind-boggling properties and behavior of these terrestrial giants. Read this electrifying book, then go out and hug a tree — with admiration and gratitude.”
—David Suzuki
About the Author
Peter Wohlleben spent over twenty years working for the forestry commission in Germany before leaving to put his ideas of ecology into practice. He now runs an environmentally-friendly woodland in Germany, where he is working for the return of primeval forests. He is the author of numerous books about the natural world including The Hidden Life of Trees, The Inner Lives of Animals, and The Secret Wisdom of Nature, which together make up his bestselling The Mysteries of Nature Series. He has also written numerous books for children including Can You Hear the Trees Talking? and Peter and the Tree Children. To learn more about Peter and his books, visit his website at peterwohllebenbooks.com.
Tim Flannery is a scientist, explorer and conservationist. He is a leading writer on climate change and his books include Atmosphere of Hope and The Weather Makers.
Jane Billinghurst’s career has been in book publishing in the UK, the US, and Canada, as an editor, publisher, writer, and translator. She is the translator of the New York Times-bestseller The Hidden Life of Trees by German forester Peter Wohlleben.
Product details
- Publisher : Greystone Books; First English Language Edition, 8th Printing (September 13, 2016)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 288 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1771642483
- ISBN-13 : 978-1771642484
- Lexile measure : 1110L
- Item Weight : 14.5 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 1 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,707 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2 in Trees in Biological Sciences
- #4 in Botany (Books)
- #5 in Nature Writing & Essays
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Peter Wohlleben spent over twenty years working for the forestry commission in Germany before leaving to put his ideas of ecology into practice. He now runs an environmentally friendly woodland in Germany, where he is working towards the return of primeval forests, as well as caring for both wild and domestic animals.
Wohlleben has been celebrated for his distinctive approach to writing about nature; he brings to life groundbreaking scientific research through his observations of nature and the animals he lives amongst. He is also the author of international bestsellers including The Hidden Life of Trees and The Inner Life of Animals.
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Wohlleben is a smart and sensitive man, and over the course of decades he got to know the tree people very well. Eventually, his job became unbearable. Luckily, he made friends in the community of Hümmel, and was given permission to manage their forest in a less destructive manner. There is no more clear-cutting, and logs are removed by horse teams, not machines. In one portion of the forest, old trees are leased as living gravestones, where families can bury the ashes of kin. In this way, the forest generates income without murdering trees.
Wohlleben wrote The Hidden Life of Trees, a smash hit in Germany. It will be translated into 19 languages. The book is built on a foundation of reputable science, but it reads like grandpa chatting at fireside. He’s a gentle old storyteller explaining the wondrous magic of beautiful forests to befuddled space aliens from a crazy planet named Consume. He teaches readers about the family of life, a subject typically neglected in schools.
Evergreen trees have been around for 170 million years, and trees with leaves are 100 million years old. Until recently, trees lived very well without the assistance of a single professional forest manager. I’m serious! Forests are communities of tree people. Their root systems intermingle, allowing them to send nutrients to their hungry children, and to ailing neighbors. When a Douglas fir is struck by lightning, several of its close neighbors might also die, because of their underground connections. A tribe of tree people can create a beneficial local climate for the community.
Also underground are mycelium, the largest organisms yet discovered. One in Oregon weighs 660 tons, covers 2,000 acres (800 ha), and is 2,400 years old. They are fungi that send threads throughout the forest soil. The threads penetrate and wrap around tree roots. They provide trees with water, nitrogen, and phosphorus, in exchange for sugar and other carbohydrates. They discourage attacks from harmful fungi and bacteria, and they filter out heavy metals.
When a limb breaks off, unwelcome fungal spores arrive minutes later. If the tree can close off the open wound in less than five years, the fungi won’t survive. If the wound is too large, the fungi can cause destructive rot, possibly killing the tree. When a gang of badass beetles invades, the tree secretes toxic compounds, and sends warnings to other trees via scent messages, and underground electrical signals. Woodpeckers and friendly beetles attack the troublemakers.
Forests exist in a state of continuous change, but this is hard for us to see, because trees live much slower than we do. They almost appear to be frozen in time. Humans zoom through life like hamsters frantically galloping on treadmill, and we blink out in just a few decades. In Sweden, scientists studied a spruce that appeared to be about 500 years old. They were surprised to learn that it was growing from a root system that was 9,550 years old.
In Switzerland, construction workers uncovered stumps of trees that didn’t look very old. Scientists examined them and discovered that they belonged to pines that lived 14,000 years ago. Analyzing the rings of their trunks, they learned that the pines that survived a climate that warmed 42°F, and then cooled about the same amount — in a period of just 30 years! This is the equivalent of our worst-case projections today.
Dinosaurs still exist in the form of birds, winged creatures that can quickly escape from hostile conditions. Trees can’t fly, but they can migrate, slowly. When the climate cools, they move south. When it warms, they go north, like they are today — because of global warming, and because they continue to adapt to the end of the last ice age. A strong wind can carry winged seeds a mile. Birds can carry seeds several miles. A beech tree tribe can advance about a quarter mile per year (0.4 km).
Compared to trees, the human genome has little variation. We are like seven-point-something billion Barbie and Ken dolls. Tree genomes are extremely diverse, and this is key for their survival. Some trees are more drought tolerant, others are better with cold or moisture. So change that kills some is less likely to kill all. Wohlleben suspects that his beech forest will survive, as long as forest miners don’t wreck its soil or microclimate. (Far more questionable is the future of corn, wheat, and rice, whose genetic diversity has been sharply reduced by the seed sellers of industrial agriculture.)
Trees have amazing adaptations to avoid inbreeding. Winds and bees deliver pollen from distant trees. The ovaries of bird cherry trees reject pollen from male blossoms on the same tree. Willows have separate male trees and female trees. Spruces have male and female blossoms, but they open several days apart.
Boars and deer love to devour acorns and beechnuts. Feasting on nuts allows them to put on fat for the winter. To avoid turning these animals into habitual parasites, nuts are not produced every year. This limits the population of chubby nutters, and ensures that some seeds will survive and germinate. If a beech lives 400 years, it will drop 1.8 million nuts.
On deciduous trees, leaves are solar panels. They unfold in the spring, capture sunlight, and for several months manufacture sugar, cellulose, and other carbohydrates. When the tree can store no more sugar, or when the first hard frost arrives, the solar panels are no longer needed. Their chlorophyll is drained, and will be recycled next spring. Leaves fall to the ground and return to humus. The tree goes into hibernation, spending the winter surviving on stored sugar. Now, with bare branches, the tree is far less vulnerable to damage from strong winds, heavy wet snows, and ice storms.
In addition to rotting leaves, a wild forest also transforms fallen branches and trunks into carbon rich humus. Year after year, the topsoil becomes deeper, healthier, and more fertile. Tree plantations, on the other hand, send the trunks to saw mills. So, every year, tons of precious biomass are shipped away, to planet Consume. This depletes soil fertility, and encourages erosion. Plantation trees are more vulnerable to insects and diseases. Because their root systems never develop normally, the trees are more likely to blow down.
From cover to cover, the book presents fascinating observations. By the end, readers are likely to imagine that undisturbed forests are vastly more intelligent than severely disturbed communities of radicalized consumers. More and more, scientists are muttering and snarling, as the imaginary gulf between the plant and animal worlds fades away. Wohlleben is not a vegetarian, because experience has taught him that plants are no less alive, intelligent, and sacred than animals. It’s a wonderful book. I’m serious!
The eco-dynamic system of connection with each other and nature, the world of trees is magical to me in The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate―Discoveries from A Secret World (The Mysteries of Nature, 1), by Peter Wohllebe because it's so unreal yet scientifically facts.
Living through Derecho 140 mph wind storm in the midwest included generations of trees. Over 60% of the city’s trees are either gone or dying and require removal. The undertaking to plant more is enormous to begin developing a new canopy over many many years.
I was attracted to this book imagining there might be something I could learn to relate to the worst land storm in history's death wind through so many trees especially.
This book taught me trees are so incredibly intelligent that they will release extra seeds in the tomb of a crisis like ours to repopulate. They'll strategize the entire regrowth. They talk to one another. Yes, they communicate.
Not the loner street trees. Sad for the Right of Way variety after reading this book.
But, the wild trees. I'm amazed at the dynamic existence of so many varieties.
I recollect people saying to me, adults when I was small, don't pull off leaves. How would you feel if someone did that to you?
Now, this makes total sense.
One of my best friends is a tree expert. Even has a small tree farm in his backyard. Grows special variety over several years and finds homes for them. Like at arboretum or parks.
Not even John knows some of these incredible facts. I’m excited for you him to read and discuss.
What you can expect from this book is not only facts and details, but the truth about nature having a sense of community and animation in ways that will truly amaze you.
Finding out trees can cause their leaves to become toxic when Giraffes eat them was a little freaky. And, the scent omitted informs other trees downwind. So they do similarly. And, the Giraffes know what up so they seek unsuspecting ignorant trees upwind who will be oblivious... Crazy right?
This book is so fantastic on audio I didn't make it past the introduction before ordering a hardcover via Amazon. Borrowed on the Overdrive app from the library, but can not resist adding this to my library collection to share for years to come.
My life’s been dedicated to stewardship of nature. Reusing resources to help keep things from landfills. Creating less waste. Conserving resources. Enjoying. Learning and being a part of.
Like, created Pollinator gardens. SO many bees visit, plus butterflies and other insects.
Never have I ever experienced nature in the same way as in this book. The added depth of perspective will help me nurture trees newly, as well as my gardens. Find new ways to nurture stewardship.
I've been trying to figure out why this book is so fascinating to me. I think knowing trees are alive, but not an insect or animal or any number of creatures. I know they live, but until this book had no relation to them as communal, bright, interesting, intelligent, and creatively complex communicator beings.
I like the essence of a wild tree is deliberate, paced slowly, determined, and communal. I think we can all use friends and family like this who support us.
Human being's identity of what intelligence is confronts, for me, intelligent design at a whole new level upon reading this book.
The section I recollect on communities fostering trees in ways that invite them to thrive communally provided incredibly touching information that made me wanna foster similar outcomes. Read the book how you can, too :)
With human beings requiring so much of the earth's resources for wood, we have surrendered qualities for generations to come and will miss out on them except in what's affectionately named vintage items. Or repurposed furniture to homes.
Remembering as a child being able to access materials like mahogany and cherry easily. Now, it's specialty order or limited supply.
Particleboard and pressed wood are skyrocketing in price. With new developments in technology and the ability to 3D print homes, I predict the future of trees is uncertain.
The ability to change the trajectory of our future with evidence laid out in scientific facts like these could provide the ideas we need to thrive with our three friends together in ways that build a better future together, in my opinion.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💯
Top reviews from other countries
Peter Wohlleben has worked with trees for years, mostly in Germany, and is convinced that they exhibit behaviours far more complex than we usually reckon, behaviours that we normally associate with higher animals and birds than with plants. He describes how they communicate, both chemically through scent and electrically via their root systems and fungal symbiotes. They can also support each other in times of hardship and old age, count daylight hours, perceive environmental changes and opportunities, and remember important facts in order to shape future actions. It all makes for fascinating reading, and the material is well worth exploring.
What also came home to me was how little we know about the life of trees, largely because the timescale they live on is so slow compared to ours. But another factor which Peter highlights many times is that many of us never meet a tree in its natural state - as one part in a naturally regulated and extensive forest. Isolated trees, or those in small stands, or those living in managed woodland, are all constrained to live unnatural lives, so their growth and actions are as distorted from natural as ours would be if we were kept away from human company as we grew up. It's a rather sobering thought, that our typical treatment of trees might easily be considered cruelty.
Peter also highlights areas where our grasp of ordinary tree biology is very weak. It is common knowledge that trees draw water and nutrients out of the soil using their roots, and deliver it to their leaves and growing shoots - for some trees this is a journey of tens, or even a couple of hundred feet. It comes as a surprise to read that we don't actually know how they do this, and that the normal explanations of osmosis, capillary action, or transpiration cannot possibly account for the heights reached.
One of the most vivid parts was Peter's attempt to get to linguistic grips with the slowness of the life cycles of trees. He describes very effectively the grand migrations of forests south and north as the ice ages have come and gone, and the stages by which newly available soil is occupied first by the little plants, then by comparatively fast outlier trees, and finally by the true forests. On this timescale, some kinds of trees help one another and grow together, while others hinder and displace each other. It would make a good game, perhaps, as well as a good read, in which environmental and other external changes drive constant accommodation and negotiation.
I mentioned two things that put me off the book. The first is the writing style, which for the first half is quite pedestrian. I fully appreciate that Peter may not be writing in his native language, and the wealth of ideas kept me persevering when the writing was dull - perhaps it would have been good to have employed a co-writer to help. The second was that I would have really liked some speculation about causes, in the many areas where we don't know for sure. Peter seems committed to writing only what he is confident can be tied to evidence - which is a worthy goal in itself - but given his great experience in the field, I would have liked it more if he had included his guesses, intuitions, and suppositions.
All things considered, though, The Hidden Life of Trees is a fascinating book to delve into, perhaps as a starting point for other reading.
This may be, and with trees in particular due to the fact that they are so slow growing to the point they almost seem inert and as a result we see them as objects rather than living breathing systems. As the author writes "the wood that crackles on the fire is seen as just that, an object for our use rather than the corpse of what was once alive". A little bit like pig and pork.
With this type of 'objectifying' our regard for other is dismissed and has led to much of the destruction that we see today hence the authors approach to writing a book that paints a picture of these unique 'creatures' in an anthropomorphic way. It seems he writes in the hope of awakening our compassion gene to see trees for what they are and not for what we have culturally & scirntifically been conditioned to see.
Of course the author acknowledges that we rely on organic materials from the environment to support us and for which we depend on but do we take more than we need? and what protections are there in place? He talks of a point in case of Switzerland where it is written into the constitution that "account is to be taken of the dignity of creation when handling animals, plants and other organisms", affording the same protections across the board. It is also only recently that something similar has happened in NZ and other parts of the world where they have attributed other such equal protections to rivers and the like.
I really enjoyed this book it is packed full of wonderful research that has been done of recent, and also his own observations having spent much of his life managing mixed deciduous forests. And although i'm a little late to the table reading it, its all still very relevant.
The only quibble I found when reading the Hidden life of trees, is that at times his writing was not clear in fact on occasion he seems to contradict himself in what he is saying and I had to reread some points over again to try and establish his conclusions. This was not because the writing is technical in any way but it is evident he is not trained in writing papers or thesis's on research undertaken, its not that the research is wrong its just that it isn't always presented as clearly as what it could be.
His descriptions of process are also sometimes scant particularly in relation to the process of photosynthesis, how soil was initially formed and the way water moves in the tree. He started of with explanations of these processes but I found them grossly inadequate and maybe this is where the book would have benefited from more in-depth scientific explanations or maybe my expectations are too high after reading such books as 10 percent human, which written by an evolutionary biologist, elucidates research with a clarity and wisdom that makes the book a pleasure to read. However this sometimes lacked in reading the hidden life of trees.
All in all though its a worthy read regardless of the occasional hiccups in the writing style and it has a wealth of information that will leave you observing and connecting with trees in a way that perhaps you never did.














