SILVA FABULARUM or THE SECRET LIFE OF TREES

 

SILVA FABULARUM or THE SECRET LIFE OF TREES - What trees feel, how they communicate

/ Peter Wohlleben /

For me, visiting a bookstore is like going to a pastry shop with joy and curiosity and doing it according to a certain ritual, first I look at a shelf with professional literature (where there is usually no or there is very little forestry literature, at least in BiH), and then I go to shelves with fiction. Recently, with such pleasure and the described order, I came to the bookshelf of fiction and noticed the unusual title of the book "The Secret Life of Trees" by Peter Wohlleben. I thought, "What is this, is there a mistake in placing the books on the shelves or some" crazy-unusual "name of the book?" I randomly opened a few pages, read a few sentences and immediately bought it.

What exactly is the book "The Secret Life of Trees”??? You will best find out the answer to this question yourself if you read it, and I will try to bring it closer to you the way I saw (or read) it. Although the title says that the story refers to trees, in fact throughout the book the plot is dedicated to the forest and its constituent parts. In this book, which does not have the classic structure of a novel, the forest is both the object and the subject of the plot. I have to admit that the author ingeniously told the story of the forest in a pretty, easy, interesting, interesting and constructive way. The book is written in such a way that it is acceptable both to forestry experts and to complete laymen who know about the forest only from TV images from the aftermath of the Survival series, and today, for example: National Geographic or Discovery channels.

As can be inferred from the title "The Secret Life of Trees", it does not represent lyrical descriptions of the beauty of forests, which is often used in fiction. Peter Wohlleben's book, which I recommend for reading, is a review of many natural processes - events and relationships in the forest. It provides an analysis of the work of the forest ecosystem, ie gives descriptions of complex natural processes using a very simple vocabulary acceptable to any interested reader. In fact, a group of separate stories (chapters) from this book gives a picture of a timeless cybernetic self-organizing "superorganism". The stories that make up this book can be read separately, but together they form a unique "fable" - Stories of the Forest (lat. Silva fabularum). As a person who also writes, I must point out that it is very difficult to write in "ordinary - folk" language about very professional things. Wohllben was able to make a clear and simple linguistic bridge between science, the profession and the "ordinary" reader. Hence, it is no wonder that the book has been labelled a world bestseller.

The titles of the stories of the chapter reveal the topic of the chapter, e.g. The chapter "Love" describes the process of reproduction - seed reproduction: "It depends on the species whether there is love among the trees every spring. While conifers preferably send their seeds once a year, deciduous trees have a completely different strategy ".... or the chapter" Language of trees "describes how to communicate between trees, for example:" A single fungus can spread over many square kilometres over the centuries and thus networking the entire forest. It transmits signals from one tree to another through its lines and helps them exchange messages about insects, drought and other dangers. Lately, even science mentions the Wood-Wide-Web in our forests “... or e.g. chapter: "Wood as an air conditioner" where he describes: "The more living and dead trees a forest has, the more powerful the humus layer of the soil and the more water is retained in the total mass. Evaporation produces cold, which in turn prevents larger amounts from evaporating. It could also be said that an untouched forest can sweat in summer and achieve the same effect as sweat in humans. ” I will not write about many other chapters (stories) and their contents, I will leave them to the joy of reading to future readers..

It can be said that Wohlleben gave the forests, the old - a new form of observation, because he views them as a superorganism. Similarly, Clements wrote about the organic theory of plant communities. However, critics of this theory said that the forest plant community, although it has its own development (syndynamic path - ontogenetic development), still cannot die or be born (some part of it can disappear or be restored, but the forest as a whole still cannot) . In Clements' defense, Tansly "jumped in" and renamed the organic theory "superorganismic". Although nowhere in the text does this state that Wohlleben views the forest in the same way as Clements and Tansley, as a superorganism (composed of many small mutually coordinated organisms: plants, animals, fungi, microorganisms), which has its own metabolic processes, physiognomy (but not as an organism), structure, developmental processes, pathogens ... and he describes all that in an easy and simple way, bringing it closer to the human civilization that was reborn from nature and the forest.

Trailer for the movie "The Secret Life of Trees"

Peter Wohlleben (1964) studied forestry and was an official of the Provincial Forest Administration in Germany for over twenty years. He resigned in order to realize his ecological ideas and today he manages the ecological forest plant on the Eiffel Mountain, where he dedicated himself to the return of the virgin forest. The book THE SECRET LIFE OF TREES - What trees feel, how it communicates was published in 2015 with the original title: "Das geheime Leben der Bäume: Was sie fühlen, wie sie kommunizieren - die Entdeckung einer verborgenen Welt". The English translation was published in September 2016. This book was also the inspiration for the documentary “Intelligent Trees” which shows several of Wohlleben’s observations. In the film, Peter appears together with Suzanne Simard, a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia, who has been researching interactions between trees through mycorrhizal networks since 1997. The second documentary was made in 2020 and was shown in cinemas in the United States under the title Hidden Life of Trees. In addition to the above book, he has written several publications on nature: The Hidden Life of Animals: Love, Sadness, and Compassion: Surprising Observations of the Hidden World; The secret wisdom of nature: trees, animals and the extraordinary balance of all living beings - stories from science and observation; Can you hear the trees talking?; Tree heartbeats: Accepting our ancient connection to forests and nature ...

The book "THE SECRET LIFE OF TREES - What trees feel, how they communicate" helps forestry experts, biologists, ecologists to restore already forgotten knowledge - learning from studies and sheds some new light on them, arbitrating with new facts, creating a new perspective and space for understanding. Wohlleben without pathos, aesthetic embellishment and distortion of facts tells the story of relationships and events in the forest. The author opens people's eyes to the soul of the forest and allows them to love and understand it in a new way, and helps them separate from their zone of anthropocentric comfort and animates them to start living close to nature.