The Hidden Life of Trees
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What The Trees Can Teach Us (and lessons from the forest floor)
Last Christmas, I was curled up in my parents’ living room in Southern California, reading Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees. I glanced at the fir tree in the corner—dressed in lights and ornaments—and half-joked: “Tree, even vegetarians can’t win. Turns out plants have feelings.”
Peter Wohlleben cracked open a world I didn’t know existed: the inner life of forests. Trees, it turns out, are not the stoic loners we might imagine and more like a community that talks, trades, and looks out for its own.
Beneath the soil, roots link up through fungi called mycorrhizae (scientists nicknamed it the “wood wide web”) moving water, nutrients, and chemical messages. If one tree is attacked by pests, others get the warning and prepare. If a sapling struggles in the shade, older trees feed it sugars. Even when dying, a tree gives back its nutrients to the system.
This isn’t survival of the fittest—it’s survival of the connected. Trees growing together are healthier, live longer, and endure storms better than trees standing alone.
There’s a lesson here for humans—strength isn’t just independence; it’s interdependence.
More sage advice :) Spotted 🌴:
