Q: What’s your favorite non-SFF book?
A: One non-fiction book that I read recently and enjoyed immensely is The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, a German forester who combines his personal, life-long experience working with trees with some incredible recent science to show that trees have a lot more going on than we give them credit for.
Not only do trees change their chemistry to survive harsh conditions or scare off parasites; they also communicate and look out for each other, warning nearby trees about dangerous insects, supporting and sheltering young trees as they grow, and even sharing nutrients with sick trees. Though it waxes poetic in places, I found it an eye-opening look at such a familiar thing, and a reminder that life can be sophisticated in many ways, even if it looks very different from us humans.
Jo Miles’s story “Grow, Divide, Sacrifice, Thrive”
in Metaphorosis Friday, 21 February 2020.
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