6 Amazing Facts About Trees

In The Hidden Lives of Trees, German forester Peter Wohlleben explores the intricacies of trees’ inner lives, covering everything from communication to their role in the environment. Wohlleben’s book is both highly informative and accessible, and simultaneously scientific and poetic. In a tone of playful wonder, he explains how trees live in community with each other, care for their sick, interact with other organisms, and much more. Here are just six fascinating facts about trees that you may not have known before:

According to our definition, language belongs exclusively to humans and sets us apart from other species. In reality, plants and other animals have different ways of communicating with each other through sound and scent. Trees communicate using scents, visuals, electrical signals, and possibly even sounds.

Much more could be written on this subject, but for now let’s focus on scent. If an animal starts nibbling on a tree’s leaves, the tree will register pain and immediately start sending toxic substances to the leaves to stop the animals from eating them. Then, the tree will give off a gas to warn other nearby trees of predators, and those trees will also start pumping toxins to their leaves.

This phenomenon was first observed among acacia trees on the African Savannah that were being eaten by giraffes. Not all species of trees communicate with scent in the same way, and the ways in which a species communicates will depend on various factors.

2. They Redistribute Wealth

In the forest, trees of the same species live in communities, connected underground through vast root systems. They use these networks to exchange nutrients and ensure that everyone gets enough. If one tree is sick, the others will send more nutrients to the sick tree until it has recovered. In some cases, trees will even use underground root networks to keep the stumps of felled trees alive, although this can only occur in undisturbed forests. The reason for this interdependence is simple: trees are much stronger as forests than as individuals.

3. They create healthy climates for themselves

Thanks to their interdependent nature, trees can create the environments they need to thrive. Through teamwork, they can store water, moderate the climate, and generate humidity, all of which allow trees to live to much older ages than they would as individuals. For example, a group of beech trees can turn nutrient-deficient soil into a highly alkaline humus over the course of several decades by shedding their leaves, which makes the soil much better at storing water. Storing water allows trees to cool the temperatures around them by sweating, which helps the forest stay healthy when temperatures climb during the summer.

4. They binge drink

Well, not in the same way we do. But some species, such as beeches and deciduous trees, drink massive amounts of water during heavy rainfalls and store it for future use. With their branches angled upward, they catch water and let it run down their trunks, where it pools and gets absorbed by the roots. Many trees can drink up to a couple hundred gallons at a time, which they store underground until the next drought.

5. They take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere

It’s commonly known that trees can suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Individual trees can store up to 22 tons of carbon dioxide in their trunks over the course of their lives and the forest as a whole is constantly removing carbon dioxide from the air and storing it. Contrary to popular belief, carbon dioxide is not actually released back into the atmosphere after trees die. Instead, the carbon dioxide in their bodies sinks further into the soil. In undisturbed forests, the carbon dioxide eventually turns into coal, gas, and oil.

6. They’re best friends with fungi

The friendship between fungi and trees dates back millions of years. Like the roots of trees, fungi have their own networks underground called mycelium. Underground, fungi will grow into the tree’s soft root hairs and intertwine the tree’s roots with their own mycelium. Once the fungi has enveloped the tree’s roots, it connects with the roots of other trees and their fungal partners, which allows trees to communicate with each other more easily and exchange nutrients. Fungi do not provide such a valuable service for free — they require up to one third of a tree’s total food production in return. They also eavesdrop on any information the tree is passing through its underground network and sometimes manipulate the tree to grow in a way that will be advantageous to them. To help the tree, they also filter out heavy metals and scare away bacteria.

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