Full of life and anything but wooden

books:


	• The Tree: A Natural History of What Trees Are, How They Live, and Why They Matter Colin Tudge Three Rivers Press, 2007 - 480 pages average customer review:based on 11 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Full of life and anything but wooden

As a nature writer myself, I'm always thrilled to come upon another writer in the genre, one new to me, whose work has the same effect on me as a plunge in a mountain stream. It washes the cobwebs out of my brain, leaves me feeling small and humble, and opens up new avenues of thinking. Colin Tudge's masterful, concise, and grandly entertaining book on trees is this kind of book. The marvel of it for me is how Tudge can take so much hard science and make it riveting. I have no doubt that Tudge is one of the greatest nature writers ever. Bravo, bravo, bravo!

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Great book on trees

This book would make a great gift for any tree enthusiast, packed with information not addressed in most "how to" books on planting and growing trees.

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Poems Are Made by Fools Like Me...

...but only an environment can make a tree. The necessary adaptation of plants to their environment, which makes some of them shape themselves as trees, is one of Colin Tudge's central points in this immense study of the evolutionary history of trees, of their fantastically complicated taxonomy, of their "life styles" as stationary but highly active organisms, and of their place in a world increasingly managed by a species of primate whose origins were arboreal.

As other reviewers have noted, The Tree has three distinct trunks. The first 86 pages - What Is a Tree? - answers its own question by stating that "a tree is a big plant with a pole in the middle". Later the author continues: "...there are many lineages of trees--quite separate evolutionary lines that have nothing to do with each other except that they are all plants...'Tree' is not a distinct category like 'dog' or 'horse,' It's just a way of being a plant." Thus it seems, the concept of 'tree' is more of a Platonic form than a solid scientific classification. Tudge continues to discuss the convergent evolution of trees in terms of their competitive adaptation to specific environments. I believe he would agree with me that the 'specific' is most often the root of the 'species.'

The second section of the book - All the Trees in the World, 160 pages - is an exhaustive and exhausting catalog of the families, genera, and species of trees world-wide. Unless you are the kind of reader who finds taxomony more entertaining than table tennis, this plethora of info may blur in your mind and you may abandon the book before the final section. That would be a shame, since the final section is by far the most interesting. The good news is that you can vault over the trees without losing your way in the forest. In other words, I recommend reading the first and last portions of the book, and saving the middle third for occasions when you want information about certain species.

The third portion of the book - two sections, The Life of Trees & Trees and Us - is the most exciting and could effectively stand alone. No longer focusing on "what" a tree is, Prof. Tudge examines "how" a tree is - that is, how various species of trees sprout, grow, interact, and reproduce. What a wealth of observations he presents! This reader, for instance, has walked under kerchillions of tree without ever noting that conifers buttress their heavy limbs by adding wood from under the bough, while flowering trees buttress by adding wood above the fork. I rushed to the nearest mixed forest after reading that, and by Odin, it's true!

The final chapter discusses the importance of trees to human societies, past, present, and future. Prof. Tudge correctly assumes that trees can and must play a major role in the approaching crisis of anthropogenic global warming. Not only are trees very effective sequesterers of carbon while living, and not only does the destruction of forest release huge volumes of carbon into the atmosphere, but also the main product of trees - wood - could with proper foresight play a huge role in managing and slowing down global warming. Wood used for construction sequesters carbon just as effectively as living wood in the forest. There is one tree or another, according to Tudge, that can produce practical materials for almost any construction need, even including modest skyscrapers, and can replace almost any plastic. Furthermore, cultivation of trees could beneficially replace sugar, tobacco, cotton, and other economically inefficient crops, especially in currently destitute regions like Cuba, North Dakota, and the Sahel. There is a tree that could thrive in nearly every environment, since diverse environments have already produced the fantastic diversity of trees.

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Let Treedom Ring

Here Colin Tudge packs into one volume enough information on trees to fill several dozen field guides and botany textbooks, all within an accessible natural history. It's a very ambitious endeavor that mostly rewards the reader handsomely, notwithstanding some readability issues raised by that very same wealth of knowledge. Tudge starts the book by asking "What is a Tree?" and the answer is far more complex and enlightening than even lifetime tree lovers would expect. But when Tudge moves into descriptions of the world's arboreal bounty, trouble arises. It's tough to pack so much information into one book without under-explaining the items you choose to cover and being forced to delete other items that are just as worthy. That's the main problem with the middle portion of the book - an often fascinating but ultimately tiresome slog through a few hundred different orders of trees and their representative species. An overload of Latin terminology and brief descriptions march by in a fashion that makes you appreciate the enormous diversity of the world's trees, but also makes you wonder if more specific field guides would be a better way to learn more about a smaller number of trees depending on one's personal interests.

Fortunately, the book is saved by the third and fourth parts, in which Tudge explores the lives of trees in relation to each other, the natural world, and us. Of course, Tudge is prone to fanciful tangents and an over-reliance on rhetorical questions, and there's not much new to the final chapter's coverage of worldwide environmental and social problems. Regardless, the book closes with a very insightful discussion of how humanity needs trees, in many different ways, and this ultimately makes the book a success for the patient and passionate reader. [~doomsdayer520~]

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

There are redwoods in California that were ancient by the time Columbus first landed, and pines still alive that germinated around the time humans invented writing. There are Douglas firs as tall as skyscrapers, and a banyan tree in Calcutta as big as a football field.

From the tallest to the smallest, trees inspire wonder in all of us, and in The Tree, Colin Tudge travels around the world?throughout the United States, the Costa Rican rain forest, Panama and Brazil, India, New Zealand, China, and most of Europe?bringing to life stories and facts about the trees around us: how they grow old, how they eat and reproduce, how they talk to one another (and they do), and why they came to exist in the first place. He considers the pitfalls of being tall; the things that trees produce, from nuts and rubber to wood; and even the complicated debt that we as humans owe them.

Tudge takes us to the Amazon in flood, when the water is deep enough to submerge the forest entirely and fish feed on fruit while river dolphins race through the canopy. He explains the ?memory? of a tree: how those that have been shaken by wind grow thicker and sturdier, while those attacked by pests grow smaller leaves the following year; and reveals how it is that the same trees found in the United States are also native to China (but not Europe).

From tiny saplings to centuries-old redwoods and desert palms, from the backyards of the American heartland to the rain forests of the Amazon and the bamboo forests, Colin Tudge takes the reader on a journey through history and illuminates our ever-present but often ignored companions. A blend of history, science, philosophy, and environmentalism, The Tree is an engaging and elegant look at the life of the tree and what modern research tells us about their future.

From the Hardcover edition.

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