'The secret life of trees'

Add on to the previous post. If you are in any way interested in trees you should definitely try and get a hold of a book by Colin Tudge, 'The Secret Life of Trees'. Colin is an extremely well informed science writer and the book is a really in depth look at trees and how they are related to each other and was aptly described by a writer for the Financial Times as 'A love letter to trees'. I borrowed the book from my good friend Paul (read his comment on the previous post to discover his love for trees) and I have not as yet finished the whole book, but I have thoroughly enjoyed it thus far. It is not a 'sit down and read' book because it has a lot of information to absorb, but it is great to ave lying around to read a section at a time.


Tudge has another book out on birds which follows in a similar fashion as the tree book. I will get my hands on it soon and hopefully put a short summary or review of some sort.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm definately getting a copy of this book. When I was at Uni (all those yrs ago) I remember writing an essay on the roll of tree canopies on forest diversity. it fascinated at the time, I'm sure this book will do the same

Paul McBride said...

The Secret Life of Trees is a glorious book, indeed. Definitely a dense read - it turns into a bit of a laundry list in the middle, which might not be for everyone - but could always be skipped over by those who don't want to read about *every* group of tree on earth... I remember that I gave some parts of the middle a more cursory read. Absolutely don't be put off by that though!

Tudge has this passionate writing style where he crams every interesting oddity he can into his descriptions. The book is filled with passages that leave you grinning!

His extended discussion of the relationships between fig trees and their allied fig wasps is must-read stuff.

Bizarrely, I saw a review of this on Amazon that claimed this was a pro-Intelligent Design book. It is nothing of the sort.

Jarrod said...

I too read the review on Amazon. 'Anthony' who wrote the review seems to have completely misunderstood what Tudge was saying. I can't understand how he came to the conclusion that the book was somehow an ID book or how Tudge is somehow a proponent of ID.

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