The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature's Great Connectors

The book's messages is that it takes a community to do virtually anything in biology. David George Haskell conveys that message in two ways. He examines specific trees and their environments around the world, about a dozen of them. He writes like an obsessed poet. The following is from Haskell's chapter on the balsam fir.Part of a plant's intelligence exists not inside the body but in relationship with other species. Root tips, in particular, converse with species from across the community of life, especially with bacteria and fungi. These chemical exchanges locate decision making in the economical community, not in any one species. Bacteria produce small molecules that serve as signals, allowing the cells to make collective decisions. These same molecules soak into root cells, where they combine with plant chemicals to promote growth and regulate the architecture of roots. Roots also signal to bacteria, providing them with sugars that both nourish the bacteria and switch on their genes, his halo of food and encouraging chemical signals causes the bacteria to cluster into gel-like layers around the root. Once established, the bacterial layer defends the foot from attack, buffers it from changes in salt concentration and stimulates.growth.Haskell is a careful observer. Here he describes sounds in and around a sabal pine in North Carolina.A hydrophone--a microscope protected within a waterproof, egg-shaped rubber shell--reveals a different experience for sand grains and palm roots. What my feet felt as a tender hum was, sensed from within the water , ca clamor. I had expected mere sloshing but got my ears blasted within I sank the hydrophone. A lap of seawater arrived with the impact of a bucked of water hurled at a wall. Immediately I twisted down the volume on my sound recorder. The scrape of water across sand was like the sweep of a planer across wood, then the sound rose to a shriek as the sand grains accelerated. As the water receded, it entrained a growl of dragged, jostling grains. The touch of the sea, the most gentle of water movements, overpowers any sand that it reaches. Grains tumble and fly. Lighter particles, like clay or pieces of dead leaf, are swept away.Haskell participates in full in his explorations. Here he is in the rain forest of Ecuador.One does not need to reach out to find danger. I lean forward to pick up my notebook and a bullet ant drops from the vegetation into my gap between my shirt collar and nape, landing with a quite puk. Those curious entomologists who have deliberately samples the full palette of inset-induced pain rank the bullet ant ad the top of their global scale. The ant greeted my neck with a jab from a venomous abdominal stinger. The pain was like a strike on the bell case from the purest bronze: clear metallic, single-toned. I never knew how my nerves could ring until that moment I was "lifted and struck" by small-arms fire from a tree. My left hand slammed at the sting, sweeping away the attacker. Before it dropped to the ground, the ant scalpeled my index finger with its mandibles, slicing two grooves as it bit down. Unlike the stinger's purity, this pain was a shriek, a fire, a confusion. Over minutes the sensation ran across the skin of my hand, a cacophony and panic that soaked the hand in sweat. For the next hour my arm was incapacitated, my left pectoral muscle felt wrenched and bruised. Hours later, muffled by drugs, the bite and sting were reduced to a hot whine, as load as a hornet sting, but not deafening. This was my initiation into t one reality of the forest. I felt non of Thoreau's "indescribable innocence and beneficence" in this network of relationships. The art and science of biological warfare reach their highest states of development in the rain forest.

Every now and then there is the rare book that, when you come to the end, you are saddened. You look for more. That’s how engaging is this whirl around the world, visiting very specific, individual trees over and over for the most part, watching them grow, flourish, adapt and die, in their contextual relationship with the rest of the world around them. All very natural responses. Thoughtful, precise, factual and without exhortation the message this book sends resonates deeply. Highly recommended.

I am learning a great deal about trees, forests and interactions between and among different flora and fauna. The only thing I find difficult is that the print is quite small so I have to read only a few pages at a time then take a break.

I love this book -- the message, the detail, the philosophical look at man's connection to every piece of nature, down to the tiniest of beings. My experience in purchasing this book is very personal. My husband and I own a small, lovely, east-facing 1880's home in a small New England town with a large enough back yard for our 12 grandkids to romp and play, but feel safe and secure, too. We have a distant harbor view, a bike path at the far end of our yard, and until one year ago on May 5th, 2017 -- 11 old, grand, tall, magnificent Pine Trees bordering a portion of the north side of our yard. These trees were mesmerizing to me and to my family -- their size, the way the bent toward the east from a couple hundred years of winter winds blowing off the harbor. They provided peace, shade, privacy and sanctuary, but enough space between the 11 to talk to our neighbors. The pine needles and pine cones were "gold" to our grandkids for projects. When our elderly neighbor sold her home, new neighbors from California closed on their home on May 4th and on May 5th, every single one of the pine trees was cut, bulldozed, chopped and gone -- for a better harbor view for them. We had thought the trees were ours, but an inch or so made them theirs. No discussion. No saving 2 or 5 or 8 trees. Everything was gone. I could not reconcile my loss. I felt terribly sad and overwhelmed with the emptiness. I did tell this to our neighbors and asked why they didn't at least speak to us about the trees. The answer was easy. The view. I saw a review of The Songs of Trees in a magazine at my hairdresser's and ordered it that day. I have been reading it slowly and re-reading to absorb it all. It's an intense absorption, but now I understand the depth of my loss over the loss of those magnificent friends that held court in my heart in our yard. Their songs were an integral part of my "society" and my very soul. Beautiful book. I will be re-reading pages and chapters for many years to come.

This is a fine book. But it is not just about trees. Haskell want us to not only to understand the lives and "songs" of the trees he describes here, but also to appreciate how deeply those lives interface with human lives. He will not deal with trees as if they exist in isolation from other creatures. But instead his trees are in a web of life and liveliness, that can be political, social as well as biological. All this is a reason to read this book. However, this a book written by a scientist who can convey beauty, sound, wonder and angst. Mr. Haskell's prose is often poetic. I read this book as I did his last one. Slowly, As if enjoying a gourmet meal. Savor it.

One of the best books I have ever read. If you love trees and nature, you will love this book for its intelligent research and scope. Selecting specific trees, one at a time, from many countries, the author describes all the factors embodied by each tree, from its own composition to the insects and animals and humans affecting it in its particular environment. A subject that one might consider dull is not at all, given the author's expertise. He is an excellent writer!Elizabeth S.

I order many tree oriented books and really enjoyed this one!

I've only read the first chapter and begun the second. So far my opinion and feelings are very mixed. Yes it was fascinating to learn about the entire plant and animal world that lives in the tallest trees of the Amazon. I was given hope for the survival of these wonders, but then toward the end of the chapter found out that the survival of the Amazon is still very much at risk. And I felt depressed. I found the writing style unnecessarily dense (almost as though the author were trying to impress me with his vocabulary ) and somehow impersonal. I had just finished Oliver Sacks Oaxaca Journal , a brief book wherein we learn a great deal about ferns, Mexican history et. al., But In Sack's writing you always feel very close to the author. I missed that in Songs of Trees. I wanted to know more about Mr. Haskell, his background, why he had undertaken this project. I missed the gentle sense of humor I had enjoyed in Sack's Journal, something that could balance out aspects not so positive. The fact that I am now finishing a 450 page P.D. James mystery instead of continuing with Songs of Trees perhaps says it all. Maybe it was just the author's bad luck that I read Oliver Sacks first. I will go back (since I love trees and it's a great title) and am hoping that I may become more enthusiastic if I stick with it.

This is one of the most beautiful books I've read and I've read a lot of beautiful books. The 'nature' book market is currently awash with owls and meadows and years in hedgerows and few of them reach into the reader as this does. This is not a book about what we can see when we know the names of things and where to look. It is a book about what we do see (usually blindly) when we attend to the world at our feet, in our lungs, at our fingertips. Just because Mr Haskell travels the world to meet trees to tell this truth doesn't mean that every word brings you right back to your own doorstep or garden.

One can fall in love all over again with oneself. There are trees in deep Woods, it's a journey into deep forest... We as a little specie ,can explore several things in the natural habitat, in the biodiversity. It's a long poem which contects one with dense forest and trees. While reading one can feel each and every word has a cord to play, music flows in, around, in the air. It's a new biblle to get connected to the earth all over again. I am still reading it.... Want to memorize each word of it!! Reading it is a wonderful journey!!

Poetic scientific philosophic - funny and tragic.See the harmony and hear the heartbeats of the web of life that embraces and sustains all creatures great and Small...

Although it is a good book, having read his previous work made us expecting something even better. In this book you can feel that it is not his native land, sounds, smells, sensorial experiences cannot be replicated easily. His home is in the temperate forest of North America, from where he has extracted a master piece of simplicity and depth at the same time.Here you can discern a drift towards lyricism or imagined estances, when you are expecting a raw experience of what means to be in a foreign forest.

THE best book on the beings we named trees I have read . . . informative, astounding, beautifully written and researched over years in the lives of a collection of trees, each with a unique story to tell. From city to jungle, the co-dependancy of a tree and its habitat is the main plot with a brief history of human intervention, for better or worse, where that is a part of the tree's tale. A wonderful blend of science, philosophy, history and dedication to revealing the nature of nature.