Twelve Trees
About This Book
Trees are at the center of the environmental upheaval now under way, and this book uses a dozen species to show what is at stake. Daniel Lewis, a curator and historian at one of the world's leading research libraries, travels the globe to see each tree in its habitat and to meet the people studying it. His route runs through plant breeding labs, botanical gardens, research facilities and the depths of museum collections. It also takes him to the tops of tall trees, underwater, into the deserts of the American West and the jungles of Peru. Along the way he talks with scientists, ethnobotanists, indigenous peoples and collectives of many kinds, all of whom are examining how trees function, both as individuals and as groups, during a period of rapid change that includes climate change and deforestation. The chapters take up questions such as what happens when a once-common tree goes extinct in the wild but survives in a botanical garden, and how scientists can reconstruct lost genomes and habitats. Others ask how a tree stores thousands of gallons of water, preserves insects from millions of years ago, or stays upright in muddy swamps. Lewis also looks at how a 5,000-year-old tree has lasted so long, and how science can account for one species surviving at the expense of others. Studying trees, the book argues, means studying the past and future of the world as well as its present. The twelve species are the lost tree of Easter Island (Sophora toromiro), the coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens), the fossil tree Hymenaea protera, the longleaf pine (Pinus palustris), East Indian sandalwood (Santalum album), the bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva), West African ebony (Diospyros crassiflora), the Tasmanian blue gum eucalyptus (Eucalyptus globulus), the olive (Olea europaea), the baobab (Adansonia digitata), the kapok tree (Ceiba pentandra) and the bald cypress (Taxodium distichum).
ISBN: 9781982164058
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