The Secret Life of Trees: How They Live and Why They Matter - Tapa dura

The age of trees often inspires awe, from the redwoods of California to English oaks. We wonder how they live so long, and how they really work - after all, trees provide us with air to breathe, fruits to eat, and wood to build with - and they do the same for thousands of creatures and plants.

The Secret Life of Trees explores the way trees work and what they are, finding out how they communicate, how they tell the time, how they came to exist, and much much more. Strange and surprising, this witty and informative book will make everyone fall in love with the trees around them.

Colin Tudge started his first tree nursery in his garden aged 11, becoming an accomplished cacti grower by the age of eighteen and marking his life-long interest in trees. Always interested in plants and animals, he studied zoology at Cambridge and then began writing about science, first as features editor at the New Scientist and then as a documentary maker for the BBC. Now a full-time writer, he appears regularly as a public speaker, particularly for the British Council and is a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London and visiting Research Fellow at the Centre of Philosophy at the London School of Economics. His books include The Variety of Life: A Survey and Celebration of All the Creatures that have Ever Lived and So Shall We Reap.

The Secret Life of Trees brings together Colin Tudge's knowledge of trees and his fascination with them, built up from trips to the rainforest in Costa Rica, Panama and Brazil, to his time India, New Zealand, China, the United States ... and his own back garden. He is unable to choose a favourite tree, believing that variety's the thing.