The Genius of Trees - by Harriet Rix (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A mind-expanding exploration of how trees learned to shape our world by manipulating the elements, plants, animals, and even humankind, possessing agency beyond anything we might have imagined

For a supposedly stationary life-form, trees have demonstrated an astonishing mastery over the environment around them. In The Genius of Trees, tree scientist Harriet Rix reveals the inventive ways trees sculpt their environment and explains the science of how they achieve these incredible feats. Taking us on an awe-inspiring journey through deep history and unseen biochemistry across the globe, Rix restores trees to their rightful station, not as victims of our negligence but as ingenious, stunningly inventive agents in a grand ecological narrative. Trees manipulate fundamental elements, plants, animals, bacteria, fungi, and even humankind to achieve their ends, as seen with oaks in Devon, England, shaping ecosystems through root networks and fungi, and in Amedi, Iraq, changing sexes as they age; laurel rainforests in the Canary Islands regulating water cycles; and metasequoias in California influencing microclimates.

Some tree species have gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure their fruits reach large primates, who can spread their seeds over vast distances, while poisoning smaller and less useful mammals. Others can split solid rock and create fertile ground in barren landscapes, effectively building entire ecosystems from scratch. And new discoveries are constantly coming to light: research has shown that trees have an even greater role in preventing global warming than we thought--trees, at one time thought to produce methane actually consume it. We share one world with trees and one need for survival.

This eye-opening journey into the inner lives of nature's most powerful plant is a profoundly new and original way of understanding both the miracles trees perform and the glories of our natural world.

Review Quotes

"A compelling journey of a book, full of wonder and revelation. Highly recommended."--Sue Stuart-Smith, author of The Well-Gardened Mind

"You will forever love trees after you read this wonderful book. Not only is the text brilliant, but the author is genius. Harriet Rix's stories range from why sloths are shaped by trees to be greenish in color to the chemical secrets of chocolate trees to how one fragile moth pollinates Joshua trees. You will want to read this book again and again."--Meg Lowman, author of The Arbornaut

"A wondrous spreading canopy of a book that gives us trees as we've never seen them before: as dynamic forces, founders of our world, and agents of their own destiny as well as ours. This is science writing at its best--beautifully explained, brilliantly written, and perception-changing."--Isabella Tree, author of Wilding

"A magisterial tour de force. Rix packs in several lifetimes of science into this sweeping story of the amazing genius of trees. I learned so much. Surely destined to become a classic."--Ben Rawlence, author of The Treeline

"An exceptional book. Up to date scientifically, beautifully clear for all of us. Rix changes our entire view of trees while carrying us to other worlds and times. Enchantingly written, The Genius of Trees has personal touches that unite science, travel, and fine literature, and leads us by the hand through woods we never understood before."--Robin Lane Fox, author of Thoughtful Gardening

"In her wonderful book, Harriet Rix has given us a unique vantage point on the inalienable agency of trees. The Genius of Trees is both shocking and poetic, full of detail and even then dotted with fascinating footnotes. I left the book feeling invigorated and inspired."--Lyndsie Bourgon, author of Tree Thieves

About the Author

Harriet Rix is a tree science consultant who travels widely studying trees around the world. She was formerly based at the Tree Council, where she researched tree diseases and urban tree strategies. Rix holds a biochemistry degree from the University of Oxford and an MPhil in the history and philosophy of science from the University of Cambridge. She was a London Library Emerging Writer, and her writing and photography have been published in the Financial Times, London Review of Books, and Times Literary Supplement, among others.