Tree: A Life Story (David Suzuki Institute) - Hardcover

Suzuki, David; Grady, Wayne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1553650166 ISBN 13: 9781553650164

Publisher: Greystone Books, 2004

Synopsis

A story that spans a millennium and includes a cast of millions. The story of a single tree.

In this clear, concise, and captivating book, renowned scientist and environmentalist David Suzuki and award-winning writer Wayne Grady tell the life story of a tree, beginning when heat from a devastating forest fire opens thousands of pine cones and sends millions of seeds into the air. Most of these seeds perish, but one falls into the soil and develops into the tree that is the subject of this book.

Suzuki and Grady describe how the tree grows and receives nourishment and what role the tree plays in the forest throughout its life. It acts as a home to succession of creatures and plays a crucial role in the water cycle, in breaking rock down into soil, and in removing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen. Even after the tree dies, it provides a home for moss, ferns, and other plants, which use the tree as a nurse log, and it provides nutrients for insects and fungi. Tree also looks at the community of organisms that share the tree’s ecosystem and at the events going on in the larger world during the tree’s lifetime.

About this title

About the Author:

David Suzuki is an internationally renowned geneticist and environmentalist and a recipient of UNESCO’s Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science and the 2009 Right Livelihood Award. Host of the longrunning CBC television program The Nature of Things, he is also the author of more than fifty books.

Wayne Grady is one of Canada's finest science writers and a Governor General's Award-winning translator. He has authored eleven books of nonfiction, translated fourteen novels, and edited more than a dozen anthologies of short stories and creative nonfiction.

Robert Bateman has been hailed as the most influential wildlife artist of the twentieth century. Since his first one-man show in 1967, he has had numerous exhibitions in Canada, in the United States, and abroad—including at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and a recent tour of major galleries in Russia—and his work is held in public and private collections worldwide. Bateman is an Officer of the Order of Canada, has been the subject of numerous films, and has twelve honorary degrees. Ten collections of his work have been published, and two of his books have made publishing history by selling more than half a million copies. His lifelong passion for wildlife and nature led to his second career as an advocate for environmental concerns, a role for which he has received numerous awards and public recognition. Bateman lives on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia.

From Publishers Weekly:

Visitors to the Pacific Northwest often find themselves awed by the size of the trees, especially the grand and ubiquitous "Douglas-fir." In this slight, lovely book, environmentalist Suzuki (The Sacred Balance) and Grady (The Bone Museum) tell the tale of one Douglas-fir tree that lived for more than five centuries ("Around the time its seed was soaking in the sunshine... the Aztec Empire was building its capital city"). Woven into the narrative is a history of botany, the study of which developed during the tree’s life (a digression about the Big Bang and the formation of organic molecules feels unnecessary, though). Facts about the species awe: old Douglas-firs can have 12-inch thick fireproof bark, and it can take 36 hours for water to get from the roots to the canopy. "If left alone," write the authors, "our tree would grow forever." Bateman’s misty drawings offer portraits of the tree’s companions—woodpeckers, eagles, mice, ferns—whose lives are more fleeting. Suzuki and Grady lament the loss of old-growth forests and their biodiversity, showing how each tree is part of a massive, interconnected web of organisms including fungi, birds and insects. This book is both a touching look at a single tree and an articulate testimony to nature’s cyclic power. 13 b&w illus.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Greystone Books
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1553650166
• ISBN 13: 9781553650164
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192
• Illustrator: Bateman Robert