Tree: A Life Story | 
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Product Description
“Only God can make a tree,” wrote Joyce Kilmer in one of the most celebrated of poems. In Tree: A Life Story, authors David Suzuki and Wayne Grady extend that celebration in a “biography” of this extraordinary — and extraordinarily important — organism. A story that spans a millennium and includes a cast of millions but focuses on a single tree, a Douglas fir, Tree describes in poetic detail the organism’s modest origins that begin with a dramatic burst of millions of microscopic grains of pollen. The authors recount the amazing characteristics of the species, how they reproduce and how they receive from and offer nourishment to generations of other plants and animals. The tree’s pivotal role in making life possible for the creatures around it — including human beings — is lovingly explored. The richly detailed text and Robert Bateman’s original art pay tribute to this ubiquitous organism that is too often taken for granted.
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Customer Reviews:
• How Organisms And Species Cooperate To Survive 19 April, 2007
Like the other reviewers of this book, I found it a delightful, informative, but troubling experience. What struck me most powerfully were the ways in which trees and other plants, including fungi, cooperate with one another in the primeval forest to promote their common welfare. The Douglas fir, for example, does not disperse its seeds widely, as some trees do. Instead, most of them drop to the forest floor near its roots. As they grow, their roots and those of its parent tree grow together, and the parent tree, which is much better at producing nutrients than its offspring, actually feeds its young until they become established. As the seedlings become tall, mature trees, they return the favor by contributing to the overall health of the forest, which is literally joined at the roots. I wish the social Darwinists who think everything in nature and society is individualistic cut-throat competition and survival of the fittest would reflect on this book's description of the forest ecosystem and apply it to human society.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3CUOJG5LNENDN
• You Can't See The Tree For The Forest 12 January, 2008
It's a busy living, being a tree. With our puny life spans and lack of attention we tend to miss that fact. Suzuki and Grady have compiled an amazing amount of information into this brief, but thorough examination of a single tree's existence. The story fills in those details we miss and calls our attention to how important it is to learn them. The details are vital to us in countless ways, and being aware of them may hold some clues to our own survival as a species.
The one tree they've chosen, a Douglas-fir, started long ago, in the age of Edward I of England. The authors give an account of how a Douglas-fir is kick-started by a forest fire. That inferno we all dread is the Douglas-fir's cradle. To massive trees seeking the sun, along with many other species, the removal of the forest canopy grants fresh sunlight and nutrients in the ash that would be otherwise unobtainable. Once growth begins, the young tree sprouts roots into the soil and shoots into the air. Encountering a growing tree, we tend to see it as isolated. Grady and Suzuki quickly disabuse us of that mistake. Trees quickly enter relationships - some with others of their own kind, but also with different species. Fungi, in particular, play a vital role in a tree's life almost from the outset. The fungi bring water and nutrients to the tree, gaining sugars that are the product of photosynthesis. This relationship extends the tree's influence over a vast area. There is also chemical communication with other trees - even those of different species - calling for help or offering information about tree predators.
During the tree's mature years, the old associations are strengthened, and new ones established. As the authors impart what the tree is doing now, they also provide the evolutionary processes that make the tree what it is. Cell growth, water pumping [a process still not entirely understood], and the leafing process are all eloquently described. The science should seem compressed or distorted due to the brevity of this volume. Yet, it flows through the narrative with expressive and informative fluency. Both are experienced writers of science and this collaborative effort is a treasure for any reader.
The science described means those who performed it, whether in field observations or through laboratory effort. Another major element of success here is the relation of various researchers' lives. Many are relatively unknown, with Gregory Fedorovich Morozov likely the most significant of the people Grady and Suzuki bring to light. A Russian geographer, Morozov is described as "the founding spirit of modern ecology", a revelation that's likely to shock Sierra Club members. Morozov first pieced together the intricate relationship a forest tree has with the soil, its neighbours and its offspring. Born in 1867, Morozov had a checkered career, highlighted by a relationship with a revolutionary. Even the toppling of the czars didn't cast him in a favourable light, however, and he died in the Crimea at the young age of fifty-three. Had his work been better known in the West, the ecology movement might have enjoyed a significant boost long before it rose in the mid-Twentieth Century.
There isn't sufficient praise to describe this work. With two ranking science writers and Canada's leading wildlife artist embellishing the text, it's wealth of information, combined with a strong emotional sense of what a forest - and its trees - are all about, this book should be listed with other environmental classics. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
- Reviewed by customer ID: AJDYDG7YZY9QL
• Where Was Suzuki When I Was Failing High School Science? 27 March, 2005
i was a terrible science student in high school. i could never wrap my head around how microorganisms affected my world outside the classroom. but then, i didn't have teachers like david suzuki and wayne grady. this fascinating book looks at a single tree, and examines it life up to its death. they have an engaging writing style that is informative and clear. two big thumbs up.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A20QUF8UXVLILO
• Bait And Switch 20 June, 2008
Do book ideas come with statutes of limitations? If so, I hope the one on "Tree" expires quickly. What a wonderful idea, to biography the life of a single tree - and how these authors waste it.
In short: only about 10-15 pages of "Tree" are about the tree. The other 165-170 pages are digressions - on astrophysics; on the beauty of Washington's Salish Valley; on a spotty history of botany the authors half-finished and presumably could not expand into a book of its own. This is not a biography but a stream-of-consciousness collection of issues and platforms of which the authors want us aware and trivia they find interesting. Now, a number of digressions could conceivably be worked into the tale - chronicle the tree's development and use the obstacles it encounters as jumping-off points to explore various plant processes; explore the tree's larger environment and introduce its animal neighbors and tenants and the humans who depend on its by-products. This project should be self-structuring. Not for these authors, though.
For example: the authors mention introduce the tree as a Douglas Fir. That's hyphenated, though - Douglas-fir, as Douglas-firs aren't really firs at all, nor spruces nor pines, and the scientific name, "pseudotsuga menziesii", doesn't help at all, as it's taken from British royal botantist Alexander Menzies, who collected Douglas-fir seedlings and served on "Captain George Vancouver's [ship] Discovery", and John Muir thought that they were "the most majestic spruce I have ever beheld", even though they're not spruce, and man, WHAT were we discussing again? (The seed in the narrative getting planted, actually. We never learn exactly what type of tree a Douglas-fir is after all that, either.) Another example comes a few pages earlier, after what is falsely introduced as a continued discussion of the vital role fire plays in a forest ecosystem. For context's sake, Suzuki and Grady decide to go back to the beginning. No, the VERY beginning - like, the beginning of time itself. So we're walked through the Big Bang and the solar accretion disk and the formation of the Earth and its atmosphere and oh, golly. Some of this relates to the overall subject - the origins of photosynthesis and plant life itself - but most is completely tangental, and the topic of fire is utterly forgotten for a seeming eternity. "Tree" also brings in a lot of extraneous, daunting material that'll put off many readers; you don't toss in words like "prokaryote" unless you NEED them.
If the book's ADD didn't make it hard to follow, the authors' refusal to talk on a layman's level would. Complex biological terms are thrown at us one after the other, given only cursory explanations, forgotten, and then reintroduced chapters later. Don't have perfect recall? Too bad for you. No glossary is provided; never have I felt more that one was needed. Particularly in the early going, the authors are writing not for a popular-education book but for a four-credit biology course - minus a textbook's patient explanation or measured pace. Add an unfocused narrative and metric tons of extraneous information, and you have a tome that is often darn near impenetrable.
Many of "Tree"'s problems, in fact, can be traced to a fundamental disrespect for the audience. For one, the authors haven't given us the book for which we paid, playing on genuine curiosity about botany to trick us into financing a self-indulgent lecture. (Ironically, the concepts Suzuki and Grady force-feed us would have been self-evident had the subject matter been properly handled.) For another, they don't care to explain their concepts in clear language - in other words, they don't care whether we understand what they're saying or not. They also assume we're more familiar with the geography of the Pacific Northwest than any non-resident would be. I haven't gotten into the dumb predilection for writing about plant reproduction as if they were novelizing a cheap, if hyperliterate, porno flick. ("...[the pollen grain] luxuriates on this pubic patch while the ovule's labia swell around it; slowly the ovule engulfs the grain, which sinks into it like a croquet ball into a soft, silken pillow.")
Why, then, am I giving the book three stars? Well, it spends time with an agreeable subject, and the authors' prose is, IN THE MOMENT, well-constructed and pleasing, plant porn notwithstanding. Robert Bateman's illustrations, monochrome watercolors of nature that mimic old gravures with a mossy richness, are lush and timeless. The cover and presentation are perhaps the most attractive of any book of its year. The authors do pull themselves together for a strong and focused explanation of the mechanics of inbreeding-related deformities and the steps plants take to avoid them, which leads organically into a compelling argument against genetically-engineered crops. (To avoid inbreeding, plants have developed several mechanisms to spread their seed far away; the resultant genetic variety provides resistance against disease, as not all the plants in one area will be vulnerable to a given illness. Engineered plants, however, are homogenous, so the right illness can take out entire crops. The engineered seeds can still, though, spread themselves far from home - several thousand miles, in extreme cases - where, designed for abundant production, they'll often outcompete their wild counterparts. The population of several areas, not just a few test fields, is left genetically uniform and vulnerable to one lucky disease, and the survival of the species as a whole is that much more tenuous.) With the authors' prose and gentle tone, this book would've been a treat to read under the guidance of a good editor.
"Tree" had the misfortune to be preceded by in my reading queue by a better popular-education book, Dava Sobel's "The Planets". I can recall any number of wonderful facts and stories from that book - but I can recall little from "Tree". The idea deserved far better.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1THEQV9LKFN35
• Wonderful! 08 September, 2007
I read this book initially because I wanted a primer in how a forest works. This slim, beautifully-written book gave me what I was after, but also much more.
This is one of the best 'popular science' books I've read in ages. It manages to be poetic and profound without being pretentious or New Agey... Instead the authors allow reality (as it's currently perceived by scientists) to reveal its own mind-blowing beauty and power.
This book also explains the process of evolution, the significance of biodiversity and the extent of ecosystem interconnectedness more clearly and eloquently than anything I've read before.
Even though I read a library copy, I've now bought it, since it's one of those books I've just gotta have on the shelf...
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2VZCU6MX9K4R0
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