Into the woods

THERE ARE A LOT OF HUMANS. Teeming is perhaps an unkind word, but when 8 billion people cram themselves onto a planet that, three centuries before, held less than a tenth of that number, it seems apt. Eight billion hot-breathed individuals, downloading apps and piling into buses and shoving their plasticky waste into bins - it is a stupefying and occasionally sickening thought.
And yet, humans are not Earth's chief occupants. Trees are. There are 3tn of them, with a collective biomass thousands of times that of humanity. But although they are the preponderant beings on Earth - outnumbering us by nearly 400 to one - they're easy to miss. Show someone a photograph of a forest with a doe peeking out from behind a maple and ask what they see. "A deer," they'll exclaim, as if the green matter occupying most of the frame were mere scenery. "Plant blindness" is the name for this. It describes the many who can distinguish hybrid dog breeds yet cannot identify an apple tree.
Admittedly, trees do not draw our attention. Apart from plopping the occasional fruit upon the head of a pondering physicist, they achieve little that is of narrative interest. They are "sessile" - the botanist's term meaning incapable of locomotion. Books about trees often have a sessile quality, too; they are informative yet aimless affairs, heavy on serenity, light on plot.
Or, at least, they were until recently. The German forester Peter Wohlleben's surprise bestseller, The Hidden Life of Trees (published in English in 2016), has inaugurated a new tree discourse, which sees them not as inert objects but intelligent subjects. Trees have thoughts and desires, Wohlleben writes, and they converse via fungi that connect their roots "like fibre-optic internet cables". The same idea pervades The Overstory, Richard Powers' celebrated 2018 novel, in which a forest scientist upends her field by demonstrating that fungal connections "link trees into gigantic, smart communities".
Denne historien er fra May 03, 2024-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9500+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra May 03, 2024-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9500+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på

In the footsteps of the fallen
Three years after the deaths of the British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian activist Bruno Pereira, the Guardian joined the Indigenous peoples continuing their dangerous, often gruelling, work to protect the rainforest

Don't call me cute
Small children wreak destruction in Yoshitomo Nara's paintings, exploding conventions with a rage inspired by natural disaster, the Ramones and the bomb
The 'evil twin' of climate crisis Scientists warn about ocean acidification
Researchers call for action on marine life amid fears that falling pH levels and buildup of CO2 in seas are not being taken seriously enough
Kyiv fights a 21st-century war against old tactics, but it can't do it alone
Since Donald Trump scolded Volodymyr Zelenskyy with the words “You don’t have the cards right now”, Ukraine has been keener than ever to demonstrate that it has a few up its sleeve.

Countries count cost of Trump's travel bans and taxes
When Essi Farida Geraldo, a Lomé-based architect, heard about partial restrictions on travel to the US from Togo as part of the travel bans announced by Donald Trump last Thursday, she lamented losing access to what many young Togolese consider to be a land of better opportunities.
My mother says she'll disinherit me unless I split with my partner
I have been with my partner for 14 years and we have two small children together. I have always had a complicated relationship with my mother, who was stern and a disciplinarian when I was growing up.

Chain reaction Is nuclear power back in fashion?
Spain’s recent blackout and AI datacentres’ massive energy needs are leading politicians to reach for the restart button

A refusal to be silenced
New projects honour lives and legacies of killed men

LA cleans up and takes stock after weekend of defiance
California leaders condemn 'authoritarian' president for sending in troops as protests over immigration raids spread to other cities
THE KING OF YOUTUBE
His videos are like the crazed imaginings of an 11-year-old boy. But is Jimmy Donaldson (AKA MrBeast) merely clickbait savvy - or an avant garde genius?