What was thrilling about reading Wohlleben’s The Power of Trees was to expand on a notion I covered in a recent blog. That unlike animals, the ‘brain’ of trees – and their intelligence – exists outside of themselves. That simple difference has distinguished plants and animals for billions of years. Far longer, in fact, than animals have walked the Earth. But back then Earth would have been uninhabitable for humans. The rise of wildlife led to what we conceive healthy ecosystems to look like today. And among that definition of health are abundant ancient trees.

This is what The Power of Trees is about: ancient trees. It’s mostly about how these trees work and only occasionally dips into ‘why’. For that, it would help to apply an animal impact perspective. Because the trees of today’s habitable ecosystems endure only because of the impact of animals.

The power of trees relies on animal impact

Wohlleben’s writing strengthens my appreciation for trees but also redoubles my insistence that wildlife is, ultimately, just as important for them as it is for humans. In terms of culture and intelligence we are all equally fallible.

‘… these enormous plants are just like people: there are huge variations between individuals, and they don’t all learn at the same speed or draw the right conclusions from their life experience.’

Peter Wohlleben, The Power of Trees, (2023)

Trees power and thousand year-old brains

Wohlleben reminds us that trees, like animals, have their own culture and intelligence. There is one massive difference though … and this was a ‘wow’ moment I got from reading The Power of Trees.

Trees are able to store their intelligence for a thousand years. Animals can’t do that. Our ‘culture’ is passed on through stories, song, dance and shared experience. Compared to ancient trees our wisdom is ephemeral. Being an animal is quite a lonely existence, living inside one’s own mind. But ancient trees are physically connected to others all of the time.

‘The idea that adaptation in trees takes forever because of their long lives and the correspondingly long time between generations proved to be incorrect … the seeds they produce are equipped with all their latest survival strategies … older is wiser with better-adapted offspring.’

Peter Wohlleben, The Power of Trees, (2023)

Intelligence is merely a life form’s ability to store information needed for survival. Wohlleben describes trees’ ability to both learn, store intelligence, communicate and even pass on knowledge to each other and future generations. This makes ancient trees similar to us. But it’s the differences that are more profound. These differences help to explain why ancient trees depend on wildlife for their survival. It’s this perspective – of animal impact – that I would like to bring to this review of The Power of Trees by Peter Wohlleben.

Tree power is rooted in a stable climate

A plant doesn’t need a brain contained inside its body because it doesn’t have to be. The brain is instead connected to other plants via the soil.

Animal cultures are made through language and behaviour. We are disconnected from the Earth. There is an air-gap between each of us. This is why we can go a long time before we notice that a neighbour has a problem.

Ancient trees instantly know when something is wrong. Mother trees in forests are connected by fungal networks and communicate to regulate the survival of the trees around them. It helps trees to be connected to a mother tree that retains a thousand years of wisdom.

‘When needed, trees in a forest assist other trees that are weak or hungry … chestnuts planted along a lonely country road far from a naturally occurring woodland community are clearly on their own and must struggle to survive without any help from family.’

Peter Wohlleben, The Power of Trees, (2023)

But there is one distinct difference between trees and animals that makes ancient trees dependent on us.

Animals are mobile so we can transfer, amplify and concentrate nutrients. This way we can build habitable ecosystems.

We could go back a billion years to a time before humans and imagine ecosystems with ancient trees. But if we wind forward to our real lives today we inhabit a world where ancient trees are part of the landscape animals made for themselves. Like the way that orangutans create the canopy structure for the largest rainforest trees. Ancient trees in modern ecosystems are dependent on animals.

While Wollehben maintains that trees create climate he also writes that ancient trees can’t survive without healthy soil and stable climate. For me, these two observations would be contradictory, if not for my understanding of animal impact. The trees influence climate, yes, but the way they do – and why – is dependent on animals. For it was animals that engineered the ecosystems ancient trees became part of.

Two separate origins of life

Plants and animals originate from two different bacterial origins. While plants can generally exist without us, the diversification processes needed to maintain ancient trees, fail without animals. The ancient trees we covet are a symbol of healthy ‘modern’ ecosystems.

From a humanity perspective therefore, we are part of the system that allows ancient trees to exist. But that’s also the system that allows us to exist … alongside other animals. We animals are part and parcel of ecosystems. Ancient trees are one of the stable characteristics of an ecosystem that can support humanity. They are not the reason we exist but a function of how we exist.

So I could argue with Wohlleben’s book subtitle for The Power of Trees. It’s not so much ‘how ancient forests can save us’ as ‘how wildlife can support ancient forests and save humanity.’

If an ancient tree was writing this blog, it might imagine that animals are rather unsophisticated and inefficient. If we animals go locally extinct, our cultural connection to country is lost immediately and we have to begin all over again and that can take another thousand years or more. Our brains only store intelligence for a very short period of time.

But that is exactly why ancient trees depend on us. Our short lives are spent in a fastidious fight-to-the-death with the natural laws and forces that break down ecosystems. Wildlife has to act fast, adapt and rebuild everything momentarily, or all our habitable ecosystems disintegrate.

For a sedentary life form, a thousand-year-old brain is only good enough, if the climate for living remains stable. Ancient trees need mobile, short-lived and adaptable wildlife, rebuilding ecosystems. And it’s that outcome that makes for a stable climate overall.

Animals create stable climate

A good climate describes favourable conditions for survival. Unstable or rapidly changing climate is a problem for ancient trees and humans alike. Because the intelligence – and therefore survival – of trees (indeed all life forms), as Wohlleben explains, is based on them knowing the climate.

‘In hot dry summers, trees have big problems. They cannot escape to the shade, and they cannot take a sip of water to cool themselves down. Indeed, they cannot react quickly in any way. And because they’re so slow, it’s all the more important for them to choose the right coping strategy.’

Peter Wohlleben, The Power of Trees, (2023)

Trees are the architecture of a world that animals have collectively shaped for millions of years. It’s what led to humanity’s existence. This means animals aren’t superior in mind. But they can transfer, amplify and concentrate nutrients. Modern, healthy forests with ancient trees, are a by-product of this wildlife-driven functionality.

Wildlife creates the processes that build and maintain soil nutrients, moisture and carbon. It’s when these are out of balance that surplus energy, in the form of carbon, is released and that causes climate change. Our current predicament is one where ecosystems are collapsing because there are not enough animals to regulate them. Humans and trees alike are beginning to suffer from a lack of intelligence. That’s to say, we risk no longer knowing what to think or how to behave to survive.

The power of trees

If ancient trees die that’s a symptom of an ecosystem that has collapsed to a point that it’s not longer habitable. To maintain continuity of our own survival requires a new way of thinking about ancient trees as much as it does about humans. Ancient trees also depend on wildlife in the balance.

In our current state of mind, we treat animals as ‘the icing on the cake’. Then we all too quickly presume they are at fault for impacts on vegetation.

‘ … these old warrior oak grow in a park where large herds of mouflon sheep and fallow deer deposit copious quantities of droppings on the ground. This leads to overfertilisation with nitrogen, something trees do not enjoy at all.’

Peter Wohlleben, The Power of Trees, (2023)

But remove animals altogether and ancient trees die. Healthy trees depend on a healthy abundance and structural diversity of wildlife. The rebuilding process is messy and somewhat unpredictable, which often attracts criticism. This misunderstanding of how ecosystems work leads to a litany of mistakes in conservation (usually killing animals by regarding them as ‘pests’ before they can do what is needed to rebuild). We regularly deny animals their existential right to restore ecosystems alongside us.

When closed off from the idea that wildlife, left to itself, creates healing processes, scientists end up picking at the wounds, never quite allowing things to recover to full strength and vitality. Then there is the shifting perception of what we consider ‘normal’ and how much ecology has often become more about childhood nostalgia, than experimentation. The urge to return things to how we remember they once looked, means we build barriers to nature’s restorative progress. It’s this restoration that we need, to rebuild a habitable world.

Book review, Wilding by Isabella Tree.

Ancient trees represent complex ecosystems in their own right, containing thousands of other animals. But because their intelligence exist outside themselves and they are slow-moving and wisened, they need wildlife alongside.

In the book Wilding Isabella Tree refers to this conundrum and has found that restoring shrubby woodland reduces the harm caused. It gives the trees a head start, while also providing the habitat needed for lots of other animals to persist in the intermediate grassland.

‘Animals are part of every landscape, part of the symphony of interactions that create an ecosystem, but too much of our science is siloed into looking at all these living things in isolation from each other.’

Kristin Ohlsen, Sweet in Tooth and Claw (2022)

As Wollehben bluntly puts it, we can’t live without trees. But that also means rebuilding a world rich with an abundance of diverse wildlife.

When fantasy becomes reality

As a side-note, isn’t it wonderful to finally hear scientists discovering that the reality behind many of our childhood fantasies are true? This is what I loved most of all about reading The Power of Trees by Peter Wohlleben.

It makes me think that, deep down, we knew the science all along. We have everything we need to act now and rebuild a habitable world.

Wildlife in the Balance – Official Website