When Trees Testify - by Beronda L Montgomery (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This stunning cultural and personal reclamation of Black history and Black botanical mastery offers up lessons from the natural world shared through the stories of long-lived trees.

The histories of trees in America are also the histories of Black Americans. Pecan trees were domesticated by an enslaved African named Antoine; sycamore trees were both havens and signposts for people trying to escape enslavement; poplar trees are historically associated with lynching; and willow bark has offered the gift of medicine. These trees, and others, testify not only to the complexity of the Black American narrative but also to a heritage of Black botanical expertise that, like Native American traditions, predates the United States entirely.

In When Trees Testify, award-winning plant biologist Beronda L. Montgomery explores the ways seven trees--as well as the cotton shrub--are intertwined with Black history and culture. She reveals how knowledge surrounding these trees has shaped America since the very beginning. As Montgomery shows, trees are material witnesses to the lives of enslaved Africans and their descendants.

Combining the wisdom of science and history with stories from her own path to botany, Montgomery talks to majestic trees, and in this unique and compelling narrative, they answer.

Review Quotes

One of Essence's "16 Books by Black Authors We're Excited About This Month"
A LibraryReads Notable Nonfiction Pick
One of The Millions' Most Anticipated Books of Winter 2026
A Top 10 Title in Publishers Weekly's Science Preview

"A poignant and singular retelling of Black American history."
--Publishers Weekly

"Botanical knowledge, Montgomery argues persuasively, was intrinsic to Black people's survival and sustenance before and after emancipation. A fresh perspective on Black history."
--Kirkus Reviews

"When Trees Testify is a beautiful journey through the imagination and intellect of one of our most important contemporary science writers. Montgomery is an inheritor of the Black ecological tradition, who brings her heart and knowledge to bear on the world around us, offering deep illumination and abundant wisdom."
--Imani Perry, National Book Award-winning author of South to America and Black in Blues

"Beronda L. Montgomery draws on the experience of Black Americans, her memories of growing up in Arkansas, and her expertise as a plant scientist to reflect on the deep connections between botany and history. When Trees Testify is a fascinating, informative, and deeply moving book."
―Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction and Life on a Little-Known Planet

"We have been waiting for this. A botanical memoir, a history, a history with a Black lens--that takes us from roots to branches giving us the keys to an alternative retelling of the American landscape and the ways plants mark who we are and where we've been. This is an electric, bold weaving of ethnobotany, personal memoir, spirit and science and I am here for it."
--Michael W. Twitty, award-winning author of The Cooking Gene and Koshersoul

"Absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in the convergences of human and plant lives. Full of joy, sorrow, and brilliant insight, this book forever changed how I think about trees and American ecology and history. Black botanical legacies, and their vitally important roles in culture and ecology today, are vividly evoked in this extraordinary weave of biology, history, and memoir."
--David George Haskell, biologist and two-time Pulitzer Prize-finalist for The Forest Unseen and Sounds Wild and Broken

"I love this book. When Trees Testify is a profound journey into the heart of America. Beronda L. Montgomery shares with us the power and beauty of Black botanical knowledge. Trees invite us into the entangled lives, loves, and freedom struggles of those who came before us and those who will come after us. I learned things about trees and people that made me laugh, cry, and gasp in wonder. I wish everyone could read it."
--Katie Holten, bestselling author of The Language of Trees

"When Trees Testify is a moving and informative study of American and Black American botanical history. Combining personal narrative, family lore, and often-chilling history with deeply researched studies of important tree species, this book is thoroughly compelling. Beronda L. Montgomery opened my eyes to so many remarkable ways that trees have shaped our past and continue to guide our future."
--Camille T. Dungy, award-winning author of Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden

"A journey through science and the sacred, When Trees Testify is a revelation! Gently tracing the roots of Black land trauma--from poplar trees that bore strange fruit to cotton bolls soaked with the tears of the enslaved--Beronda Montgomery invites us to reckon with a botanical inheritance long buried beneath silence and sorrow. This powerful book illuminates an ennobling legacy . . . I will never see a tree the same way again."
--Ruha Benjamin, award-winning author of Viral Justice and Imagination: A Manifesto

About the Author

Beronda L. Montgomery is an award-winning plant biologist and the author of the acclaimed Lessons from Plants (Harvard University Press, 2021). She has been named one of the journal Cell's 100 Inspiring Black Scientists in America, and was awarded the 2021 Cynthia Westcott Science Writing Award and 2022 Adolph E. Gude, Jr. Award for outstanding service to the science of plant biology. She was named a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University (2025-26), and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society of Plant Biologists, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and the American Academy of Microbiology.