Can You Hear the Trees Talking?. Peter Wohlleben

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Can You Hear the Trees Talking? - Peter Wohlleben


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water supply is constantly refilled by rain

      and snow. To catch every possible drop of

      rain,

      decid-

      uous

      trees such

      as

      beech and oak angle their branches

      up into the air to act

      as

      big funnels. The rain runs along

      their branches to the trunk, where it shoots down to

      the ground. Sometimes so much water runs down the

      trunk that it froths up when it hits the ground.

      Conifers are not as good at catching

      rain.

      Many

      of them come from colder places, so they're better

      prepared for snow

      than

      for dry weather, After

      a

      snowfall,

      their flexible branches hang down close to their trunks

      so the tree doesn't fall over under the heavy snow.

      This doesn't work with deciduous trees. Their

      branches reach up to the sky, and they would break

      off under

      a

      heavy load of

      snow.

      That's why these trees

      drop their leaves in the

      fall.

      Then the snow can simply

      fall between the bare branches right onto the ground.

      The branches of conifers work well to shed snow,

      but not so well to catch

      rain.

      Because conifers are

      narrow at the top and their branches angle out or down

      rather than up, they act like umbrellas. This means the

      ground around the trunks of conifers often stays very

      dry, and in the summer the trees can be very thirsty.

      Being Thirsty Hurts!

      ft

      thirsty tree's trunk can tear when

      it

      tries

      to such water from dry ground.

      IF IT'S A

      VERY

      ORY

      SUMMER

      and

      spruces

      continue

      to

      suck water out of the

      ground,

      especially greedy

      trees can split open along the length of their

      trunks.

      That's a

      bad

      injury for

      a

      tree.

      Thick drops

      of pitch seep out of the wound (pitch is like the

      blood of the spruce tree], and the wound never

      really heals. That tree will have a

      long,

      seeping

      scar down its bark for the rest of its life.

      With their wide crowns, beech trees con capture a

      lot of

      rain and direct

      it

      down their trunks

      to

      the ground.

      A full-grown tree is very heavy. It can weigh more than five cars, and its trunk

      needs to be really strong so it doesn't collapse under all that weight.

      Big trees like this southern live oak need wide

      trunks to support the weight of their crowns.

      You can tell from these rings

      how old the tree was when

      it was cut down. Count the

      rings from the outside to the

      middle—the middle ring is the

      tree when it was one year

      old,

      Of

      course,

      you can't count

      the rings when a tree is still

      alive because they're under

      the bark—you can only see

      them after the tree has been

      cut down.

      *

      THAT'S WHY A TREE IS MADE of wood inside. Wood for

      a tree is a bit like your bones are for you. You could

      say that its wood is its skeleton. If you didn't have

      any bones, you'd be floppy like a rag

      doll,

      and you

      wouldn't be able to stand up. The same goes for

      the tree: it needs its wood to stand up straight. And

      because wood is so

      strong,

      it

      can

      support

      a

      tree even

      when it grows really

      tall.

      If you take a look at a tree that's been cut down,

      you'll see that its trunk is made up of

      a

      series of rings.

      Each year a new circle of wood grows under the

      tree's bark, and the trunk grows wider and wider.

      Once wood

      is

      there,

      it doesn't

      go away. Because

      a

      trunk only

      grows around the outside,

      in a

      thin layer between the bark and

      the

      wood,

      everything already inside the trunk

      stays

      the

      same,

      And


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