The trunk carries out a rather unusual role. When forming, a tree trunk mobilises a considerable amount of energy, but that is its way of gaining access, ahead of other plants, to the light it needs for photosynthesis, and of escaping herbivores. The quaking aspen of the Fishlake National Forest, in the United States, has a shared root system that covers 43 hectares and feeds 40,000 trunks.Ī tree is made up of leaves, branches and roots, but also includes the fungi with which those roots live in symbiosis in order to colonise the soil, the contact they have with roots from same-species trees, and the resulting exchanges of nutritional elements and information. Carbon-14 dating has shown that a spruce from Dalarna, Sweden, has reached the staggering age of 9,550 years. A tree stump whose trunk was cut down four or five centuries ago stays alive, thanks to exchanges carried out with neighbouring trees. The unknown treeįirst of all, a few fascinating facts. Are Ents pure fantasy? Maybe not, according to this new book by German forester Peter Wohlleben, who invites us to re-examine our “vegetative” notion of trees. They can move around and talk, albeit very slowly. Tolkien conjures up tree-like characters, the Ents, who watch over the forests. Reviewed: Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees, What They Feel, How They Communicate, Vancouver, Greystone Books, 2016
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