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Trees: From Root to Leaf
Trees nourish, protect, inspire, and restore us.
Paperback
First published January 1, 2022
10 people are currently reading
245 people want to read
About the author
Paul Smith
7 books3 followersPaul Smith is a secretary general of Botanic Gardens Conservation International, a nonprofit organization that promotes plant conservation in botanic gardens. He is a former head of the Millennium Seed Bank at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the largest and most diverse seed bank in the world.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 3, 2025
If you love a hike in a forest, or collecting fall leaves with your kids, or sitting under a tree with a book, this read will fill you with awe and joy.
Don’t let the simple title mislead you --- This is one of the most ambitious books about trees and Smith succeeds in making their diversity and ecology and cultural significance perfectly clear.
Smith was a leader with the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. He has been responsible for the “State of the World’s Trees Report.” But this isn’t a dry text full of technical words. Smith’s love and unabashed pleasure in what these plants give to our planet comes through in almost every page of text, photographs and diagrams.
The over 300 pages of this oversized book take into account: Seeds, Leaves, Form, Bark, Wood, Flowers, Fruits, Symbiosis and how humans and trees enrich each other. 5*
For those who want a little more of Smith’s style, I will quote some examples below:
On the Mopane Tree: “On deeper soils, mopane trees grow straight and tall, creating a cathedral-like effect, their trunks like pillars and their canopy forming a roof. In the autumn, mopane woodlands are similar in appearance to European beech forests, the trees’ butterfly-shaped leaves turning every shade of yellow, orange and gold. For many rural southern African communities that rely on firewood, mopane wood is like low-grade coal. The wood is dense…and it burns slowly and steadily with a very high caloric value making it the perfect fuel for fires on which to cook and keep the house warm on a winter’s night.”
On trees’ chemical defenses: “Many readers in the northern hemisphere will be familiar with the nettle…and its stinging hairs but, of course, nettles are not trees. So think of a nettle scaled up both in size and fire power and you get … the ‘gympie gympie’ tree of Australia…which grows up to…15 feet tall. As with all stinging plants in the nettle family, the blow is delivered by tiny, hollow silica hairs, which inject a toxin into the skin. In the case of the gympie gympie, the toxin is a peptide called ‘moroidin’, and the pain it induces has been likened to being burnt with hot acid and electrocuted at the same time. The most effective treatment is said to be rubbing the (body) area with dilute hydrochloric acid to denature the peptide, and then using wax strips to remove the remaining (plant) hairs…”
On man’s relationship to nature: The understanding that we are part and symbionts of nature, not somehow above it, is well established in traditional cultures. And while it is difficult to pinpoint where the opposite idea – of man’s dominion over nature – originated, it too goes back a long way….(Genesis 1:28)…Much later, the notion of humans as ‘masters and possessors of nature’ (Descartes) gained currency during the Enlightenment, and accelerated with industrialization, advances in medical sciences and other new technologies. In 1992, the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity actually enshrined in international law the sovereignty of nations over biodiversity…The rationale was that if states owned their biodiversity and were able to harness its financial value, they would also be more likely to look after it. In practice, neither of these things happened….”
Don’t let the simple title mislead you --- This is one of the most ambitious books about trees and Smith succeeds in making their diversity and ecology and cultural significance perfectly clear.
Smith was a leader with the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. He has been responsible for the “State of the World’s Trees Report.” But this isn’t a dry text full of technical words. Smith’s love and unabashed pleasure in what these plants give to our planet comes through in almost every page of text, photographs and diagrams.
The over 300 pages of this oversized book take into account: Seeds, Leaves, Form, Bark, Wood, Flowers, Fruits, Symbiosis and how humans and trees enrich each other. 5*
For those who want a little more of Smith’s style, I will quote some examples below:
On the Mopane Tree: “On deeper soils, mopane trees grow straight and tall, creating a cathedral-like effect, their trunks like pillars and their canopy forming a roof. In the autumn, mopane woodlands are similar in appearance to European beech forests, the trees’ butterfly-shaped leaves turning every shade of yellow, orange and gold. For many rural southern African communities that rely on firewood, mopane wood is like low-grade coal. The wood is dense…and it burns slowly and steadily with a very high caloric value making it the perfect fuel for fires on which to cook and keep the house warm on a winter’s night.”
On trees’ chemical defenses: “Many readers in the northern hemisphere will be familiar with the nettle…and its stinging hairs but, of course, nettles are not trees. So think of a nettle scaled up both in size and fire power and you get … the ‘gympie gympie’ tree of Australia…which grows up to…15 feet tall. As with all stinging plants in the nettle family, the blow is delivered by tiny, hollow silica hairs, which inject a toxin into the skin. In the case of the gympie gympie, the toxin is a peptide called ‘moroidin’, and the pain it induces has been likened to being burnt with hot acid and electrocuted at the same time. The most effective treatment is said to be rubbing the (body) area with dilute hydrochloric acid to denature the peptide, and then using wax strips to remove the remaining (plant) hairs…”
On man’s relationship to nature: The understanding that we are part and symbionts of nature, not somehow above it, is well established in traditional cultures. And while it is difficult to pinpoint where the opposite idea – of man’s dominion over nature – originated, it too goes back a long way….(Genesis 1:28)…Much later, the notion of humans as ‘masters and possessors of nature’ (Descartes) gained currency during the Enlightenment, and accelerated with industrialization, advances in medical sciences and other new technologies. In 1992, the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity actually enshrined in international law the sovereignty of nations over biodiversity…The rationale was that if states owned their biodiversity and were able to harness its financial value, they would also be more likely to look after it. In practice, neither of these things happened….”
December 20, 2022
This book is amazing. There’s a copy at the Portsmouth Library if you want to read it.
August 12, 2023
This is a book about everything arboreal. It illuminates many wonderful aspects of trees, and especially shows how they are interwoven with our social lives, our food and medicines and with the broader ecosystem in general. The coffee-table format is well used and chapters are divided between text explanations and infographics. The images are first class. The book deserves a broad readership.
October 7, 2023
I bought this book because it was on a list of most beautiful books, is English, has a forward by Robert Macfarlane, and well, it’s about trees. And it really is a beautiful book and trees are amazing.
December 25, 2022
Hoewel ik mezelf niet zou omschrijven als bosbeer (ook geen zeetijger) vind ik boeken over bomen , bos , zee, zeeleven meestal mooi en zeer interssant, ( net als dit boek )
Er wordt op een meeslepende wijze beschreven over verschillende soorten bomen , hout , hun levenswijze en toepassingen bv vruchten enz .
grote stukken van het landoppervlak worden bewoond door deze organismen en dat zal wel een reden of doel hebben .
interessante weetjes + heel mooie foto’s , 5 +5 sterren
Er wordt op een meeslepende wijze beschreven over verschillende soorten bomen , hout , hun levenswijze en toepassingen bv vruchten enz .
grote stukken van het landoppervlak worden bewoond door deze organismen en dat zal wel een reden of doel hebben .
interessante weetjes + heel mooie foto’s , 5 +5 sterren
July 13, 2023
This book is a magnificent exploration into learning more about trees, full of so many interesting facts and myths that i have thoroughly enjoyed learning about.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews