These are my chapters 3 and 4 notes from Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees.

Notes Entry 1 – A foreword, two introductions, and chapter 1

Notes Entry 2 – chapter 2

I just realized how boring these last three photos from my notes are. Just photos of a book, my notebook, my pen, and maybe my hand.

If you’d like more exciting images, you could always take a look at my (short) videos.

Onward!

Chapter 3 – Social Security

forests don’t want to lose weakest members (15)

• creates gaps in canopy (15)

• disrupts local climate (15)

photosynthesis in undisturbed beech forests: (15)

• synchronized between trees! (15)

• all equally successful (15)

• UNEXPECTED due to different soil conditions for each tree (15)

abundance is SHARED (16)

• fungi act as redistribution mechanisms (16)

•’social security’ (16)

• thinning trees out ISOLATES them (17)

• creates gaps in communication (17)

• shortens lives of the healthy trees (17)

when feeble trees disappear: (17)

• sun and wind penetrate to forest floor (17)

!disrupts climate! (17)

Chapter 4 – Love

reproduction planned 1 year in advance in deciduous trees (19)

• 3 – 5 years

• deciduous trees decide based on conditions (19)

• so that herbivores can’t count on beech nuts and acorns (19 – 20)

• conifers send out seeds yearly (19)

‘mast year’ (20)

• year when beeches and oaks set seed

• multi year gaps cause herbivores numbers to crash

• helps seedlings sprout

trees that use WIND for pollination (21)

• how to avoid inbreeding (pollinating its own flowers)? (22)

• timing (22)

• male and female blossoms flower a few days apart

• genetic testing! (22 – 23)

• bird cherries block the tube unless there are foreign genes present

• individual genders (23)

• willows osage orange trees?

• males make catkins BRIGHT YELLOW to attract bees there first (24)

• wind also brings in long distance genes (24)