All roots and branches

This book covers all the trees that now live or have ever lived: what they are, how they function, how they grow, their relation to environment, plants, animals, and the human species. It is full of curious information, traditional and recent: there are fascinating new developments in long-familiar stories, such as the part played by parasitic worms in the symbiosis between figs and fig-wasps.

The author is a distinguished journalist and scientist. His book is a brave attempt to boil down a huge amount of detail for the general reader. I am reminded of Rachel Carson’s The Sea Around Us, which inspired my youth. However, like all tree writers, he seems unable to avoid errors and exaggerations (‘the tree must compete through every second [of its life]’). The reader is given little opportunity to check or amplify claims such as that building cities and ships diminished the oaks of Britain.