The Secret Wisdom of Nature: Trees, Animals, and the Extraordinary Balance of All Living Things -— Stories from Science and Observation (The Mysteries of Nature Trilogy Book 3)

Fungi can be every bit as long lived as trees. Ancient honey fungus networks have been found underground in North America. The record holder is a fungus belonging to the species Armillaria ostoyae. It is 2,400 years old and has spread to cover 3.5 square miles.

Forget-me-nots, however, can only conquer new territory so successfully because they have an army of tiny allies: ants. It’s not that ants are particularly fond of flowers—at least, they are not attracted by their aesthetic qualities. Ants are motived by their desire to eat them, and their interest is triggered when forget-me-nots form their seeds.

TREES CAN ACHIEVE great things together without meaning to, even when their achievements have nothing to do with survival.

It is more important to me to state the facts so that people can understand them emotionally. And then I can lead them on a full sensory tour of nature, because that way I can communicate one thing above all: the joy our fellow creatures and their secrets can bring us.

Deciduous trees, after all, show that there are other ways of doing things. As long as they’re alive, they’re absolutely immune to fire. This is something you can easily test for yourself (but please with just a single green twig). No matter how long you hold a flame underneath it, the twig will not burn. Spruce, Pines & Co., in contrast, ignit

In contrast to a human brain, a woodpecker’s brain sits firmly in its skull so that it doesn’t bounce back and forth while it’s using its beak to deal staccato blows to a tree. As an added precaution, there’s a special springy support behind its beak that cushions the blows before they travel to its skull. Despite this, fresh wood is simply too den

It’s important for us to realize that even small interventions can have huge consequences, and we’d do better to keep our hands off everything in nature that we do not absolutely have to touch.

Trees have only two strategies to survive this roller coaster. First, most can survive in a wide range of climates. You can find beeches from Sicily to southern Sweden and birches from Lapland to Spain. Second, the genetic bandwidth within a species is very wide, so in a forest you can always find individual trees that can deal with the new conditi

There is, for example, the coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens), one of the mightiest trees in the world. It can grow more than 300 feet tall and live for many thousands of years. Its bark is soft, thick, and slow to burn. If you find one of these in a city park (and you can find them in many city parks all over the world), step right up to it and