THE HIDDEN LIFE of TREES: WHAT THEY FEEL, HOW THEY COMMUNICATE - DISCOVERIES from a SECRET WORLD by Peter Wohlleben








Published by HarperCollins Publishers Limited in 2016.
Read by Mike Grady.
Duration: 7 hours, 33 minutes.
Unabridged.

Peter Wohlleben is a forester in Germany, meaning that he manages a commercial forest in Germany. Even though he manages a commercial forest, he is a real fan of true "old growth" forests. Over the years he has gone out of his way to really study the way forests work as a complete unit. 

In The Hidden Life of Trees, his observations and research combine to tell an active, but very slow story of trees. Compared to people, many trees live a much slower life (centuries vs. decades), but a forest of trees is more than just an accidental accumulation of trees whose seeds all landed in the same place. 

In many ways, a healthy forest is a lot like a giant organism - it shores up its weak parts, it sustains itself, it is extraordinarily complicated and if one part is out of whack, the whole thing can suffer. Wohlleben explores these themes in some detail with a lot of surprising details.

But, a forest is also a place of deadly competition. Different species of trees struggle to block each other's sunlight, fungus tries to grow in and on trees, some animals kill or eat young trees and some animals can actually fatally damage larger trees (it can take decades, but when a tree lives centuries . Eventually, though, Wohlleben  brings it all around to demonstrate that all of this deadly competition is actually part of a healthy forest.

It is kind of tough for me to rate this audiobook. The reader was great and so much of the information was interesting - but it was often delivered in a repetitive, slow-paced manner. Many times the book was both boring and interesting - at the same time!

But, the quality and the wealth of the information makes me rate it 4 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here:  THE HIDDEN LIFE of TREES: WHAT THEY FEEL, HOW THEY COMMUNICATE - DISCOVERIES from a SECRET WORLD by Peter Wohlleben.

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