The book was published as The Tree AND also as The Secret Life of Trees by the same author – Colin Tudge. Do not confuse this with The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, which was our first selection back in 2019 or with The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird. That book, published in 1973, has become something of a cult plant book, often reviled as pseudoscientific, but laying the groundwork for a more scientific approach to studying sentience in plants.

The Tree is a long book and this post summarizes our discussion of the first and second sections only. The second section is titled “All the trees in the world” and can be a bit sloggy. My take on the book is that Tudge is widely read and likes to summarize material. The Tree is short on specific references but generally the notes for each chapter mention one or two references (often entire books!) he relied on. The book has been described as both too much and as too little and I think that it is because he has tried to summarize a very lot of information. It can definitely feel overwhelming because even in summary it is a very lot of information. It can also feel frustrating because just as you think you understand something, he’s off to the next topic. It’s a great way to dabble and get some ideas about what you really do (or don’t) care about knowing about trees. And he has just enough really interesting, unusual facts or stories that I basically couldn’t simply say something like: “Oh, a chapter on gymnosperms, I think I’ll skip that.”

Since publishing this book in 2006, Tudge has moved on to “Real Farming” and more recently to something he calls “The Great Re-Think.” It certainly shows that he is a man who thinks a lot and tackles all manner of subjects. Sadly, I could find nothing on his website related directly to “our” book or, really very much elsewhere on the web either. However, he is interesting and this is the link to his website.

I did find a 48:47 video, La Vida Secreta de los Arboles. It is an interview with him around the time the book was published, and yes, it really is in Spanish. I, sadly, don’t know enough Spanish to be able to follow it very well but for those who do, I think this could be a good resource.

The book begins by asking: what is a tree? Easy, you think. Tudge then proceeds to explain why it’s hard to say what, exactly, makes a plant a tree. I think that we in the Southwest have some familiarity with the idea that size isn’t as important as it’s sometimes cracked up to be. Still, the question is one that allows me to recommend one of my favorite sites on monumental trees.

I think the highlight of our discussion might have been this approximately 20-minute video called The Surprising Map of Plants. Far more engaging than the static (but beautiful) trees of life, several people commented that having this map available would have made it far more easy to understand the first section of the book.

Along the same line but a bit more academic is this 8-minute video on plant classification.

How did plants become plants, how do they move around, and how have they evolved? I had at one time come across the Paleon Project but it seems not to be active any longer. I did find this one scientific article from the project, though. The idea as I understood it was that you could have interactive/live maps showing trees flowing across the NE US in response to millions of years of climate change and other stresses. I have visions of trees extending north, perhaps, and then reversing course and heading south in the face of an ice age: a graceful give and take of trees and their environments.

Of course, such work relies on fossils. That leads to the whole research area around the plant fossil record.

As it turns out, even fertilization is more complicated than one might think. Here are just two links about fertilization here and here.

And then there’s the different approach to procreation taken by gymnosperms.

It is a fact that much of forestry, and of the scientific study of trees, does revolve around the economic value of wood so a reurring theme in the book is wood properties.

To finish up our discussion, I looked up a number of trees that I perhaps didn’t know of or didn’t know much about. You could probably look up about another billion trees…. okay, another several hundred thousand!

Tane Mahuta, the nearly 2000-year-old Kauri Tree
The wollemi pine, aka the world’s rarest tree, aka Australia’s ‘phoenix tree’
The celery pine
The custard apple
Nutmeg and mace or the seed and its aril
Glorious grass trees