The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from A Secret World (The Mysteries of Nature Book 1)

You can study capillary action every morning at breakfast. Capillary action is what makes the surface of your coffee stand a few fractions of an inch higher than the edge of your cup. Without this force, the surface of the liquid would be completely flat. The narrower the vessel, the higher the liquid can rise against gravity.

it makes its way up around the little trunks, always twining in a clockwise direction.

One reason that many of us fail to understand trees is that they live on a different time scale than us. One of the oldest trees on Earth, a spruce in Sweden, is more than 9,500 years old. That’s 115 times longer than the average human lifetime. Creatures with such a luxury of time on their hands can afford to take things at a leisurely pace. The e

Under normal circumstances, a tree carefully apportions its energy. The largest portion is used for daily living: the tree has to breathe, “digest” its food, supply its fungal allies with sugar, and grow a bit every day. Then the tree has to keep hidden reserves of energy on hand to fight off pests.

The process of learning stability is triggered by painful micro-tears that occur when the trees bend way over in the wind, first in one direction and then in the other. Wherever it hurts, that’s where the tree must strengthen its support structure. This takes a whole lot of energy, which is then unavailable for growing upward.

And what is the point of all this? Deep down inside, do trees secretly appreciate beauty? Unfortunately, I cannot say, but what I can tell you is that there is a good reason for this ideal appearance: stability. The large crowns of mature trees are exposed to turbulent winds, torrential rains, and heavy loads of snow. The tree must cushion the impa

Apart from wrinkled skin and mossy growths, there are other physical changes that indicate a tree’s age. Take, for example, the crown, which I can compare with something I have as well. Up top, my hair is thinning. It just doesn’t grow like it did when I was young. And it’s the same with the highest branches up in a tree’s crown. After a specific t

If trees are capable of learning (and you can see they are just by observing them), then the question becomes: Where do they store what they have learned and how do they access this information? After all, they don’t have brains to function as databases and manage processes. It’s the same for all plants, and that’s why some scientists are skeptical