"In an era of cell phone addiction and ever-expanding cities, many of us fear we've lost our connection to nature--but Peter Wohlleben is convinced that age-old ties linking humans to the forest remain alive and intact. Whether we observe it or not, our blood pressure stabilizes near trees, the color green calms us, and the forest sharpens our senses. Drawing on new scientific discoveries, The Heartbeat of Trees reveals the profound interactions humans...

Humans have always revered long-lived trees. But as historian Jared Farmer reveals in Elderflora, our veneration took a modern turn in the eighteenth century, when naturalists embarked on a quest to locate and precisely date the oldest living things on earth. The new science of tree time prompted travelers to visit ancient specimens and conservationists to protect sacred groves. Exploitation accompanied sanctification, as old-growth forests succumbed...

The 14 trees in this book have earned the title "Celebritrees" for their global fame and significance. Both in fact and in legend, these fascinating trees remind us not only how much pleasure trees bring, but what they can tell us about history.

A lonely little fir tree, standing by itself at the edge of the forest, has its life transformed when a father takes it home to serve as a living Christmas tree for his bedridden son.

At a Christmas tree farm, a young pine tree who does not like people, decorations, or lights grows into a twisted, spooky, old tree, just right for Halloween.

"Once, farmers knew how to make a living hedge and fed their flocks on tree-branch hay. Rural people knew how to prune hazel to foster abundance: both of edible nuts, and of straight, strong, flexible rods for bridges, walls, and baskets. Townspeople cut their beeches to make charcoal to fuel ironworks. Shipwrights shaped oaks to make hulls. No place could prosper without its inhabitants knowing how to cut their trees so they would sprout again. ...

A small evergreen tree is adopted by a family at Christmas.

"A young girl visits an arboretum in the autumn to collect fallen leaves. She identifies various trees by the shapes of their leaves and pastes her collection into her own leaf book"--

Geraldine the pig has her heart set on getting a really big Christmas tree--no matter what.