Summary and Analysis of The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from a Secret World

The whole forest benefits when the trees care for each other, because a colony of healthy trees means a better ecosystem for all.

Trees form “friendships” and these friendships help them stay healthy and live longer.

A tree also benefits from having nearby trees that can help it with energy when it is stressed. Planted trees aren’t able to receive this kind of community assistance because their roots are damaged during planting and can’t form the necessary network.

Caring for trees isn’t only a moral choice, it’s in humanity’s best interest. Humans need trees to survive.

The trees form a society, and they communicate through a language of chemical signals that they can use to warn one another of dangers, such as an insect attack. If a member of the society is sick, the other trees will come to its aid by sending sugar and nutrients through a network of interconnected roots and fungi. “Mother” trees nurse their offspring the same way.

People don’t often think of trees as having intelligence or emotions, perhaps because trees move on such a different timetable, their reactions are so slow that they appear inanimate

Aachen University began doing research in the forest, and Wohlleben learned that trees have memories, experience pain, and nurse their children. This changed the way he treated the trees in his care, including abandoning the use of heavy machinery.

he looked at trees only in terms of their value to the lumber market.

If we want to use forests as a weapon in the fight against climate change, then we must allow them to grow old, which is exactly what large conservation groups are asking us to do.

United We Stand, Divided We Fall