skip past newsletter promotionĭeciduous forests in particular remove greenhouse gases effectively, and sequester carbon for as long as they live. The second is epigenetic inheritance, which enables useful behavioural traits to be passed on fast to future generations. Mother trees regulate their children’s growth by changing the rate at which they drip-feed them with sugar solution through root networks, and children growing in the rain and light shadow of the mother won’t drink heavily or overeat. They have two main methods for influencing their children: the first is good parenting. Trees that have narrowly escaped drought are more prudent in the future: they slow their growth and ration their drinking. As a species, we have survived many climatic changes by changing our behaviour – and that’s how trees survive, too.Ĭrucially, trees learn from their past traumas and produce offspring programmed with those lessons. Drought can kill trees fast, but trees have many sophisticated ways of dealing with it, and Wohlleben sets them out. The coniferous monocultures so beloved of commercial foresters are not such good coolers: they’re up to 8C warmer than their deciduous counterparts.įorests cool by transpiring. Berlin is 15C warmer than the ancient forests nearby. A deciduous forest in summer is often as cool as a lake. Anyone who has planted a tree in their garden knows that it has a profound effect – it makes your garden cooler in summer and warmer in winter.
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