German forester Peter Wohlleben believes that we can learn a lot from trees. He wrote a book called The Hidden Life of Trees, in which he draws on scientific discoveries to demonstrate that the forest is a social network; communicating and ofen sharing food with their own species, and sometimes even with their competitors.
As a forester, Wohlleben's job was to optimize the forest’s output for the lumber industry. He “knew about as much about the hidden life of trees as a butcher knows about the emotional life of animals.”
However, about twenty years ago, he began organizing survival training for tourists in his forest. His perspective changed as he watched people marvel at the trees, and their curiosity sparked his own childhood love of nature. No longer able to view trees as a commodity, he began to see them as majestic living beings.
The thing that surprised him the most was how social trees are. One day, he came across an old stump and saw that it was still living, although it was 400 or 500 years old. As every living being needs nutrition, the only explanation was that it was supported and fed by its neighboring trees via the roots.
Why are trees so social? The reasons are the same as for human communities: there are advantages to working together. A tree can only be as strong as the forest that surrounds it. Therefore, every tree is valuable to its community and worth keeping around for as long as possible.
