The Genius of Trees : How trees mastered the elements and shaped the world

Harriet Rix

ISBN 10: 1847927823 / ISBN 13: 9781847927828

Published by Vintage Publishing Aug 2025, 2025

About this Item

Neuware - \*\*LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2026\*\*'Sublime . A true masterpiece' DAILY TELEGRAPH, ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿'Mind-blowing' GUARDIAN'Wondrous. Gives us trees as we've never seen them before' ISABELLA TREE, author of Wilding\*\*A TELEGRAPH, COUNTRY LIFE, NEW YORKER and CRITIC BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025\*\*The extraordinary story of the inventive and astonishing ways trees have shaped our natural world.Over hundreds of millions of years, from the prehistoric forests to those standing tall over us today, trees have evolved to sculpt the environments. They split rock, change sex, spin carbon, and manipulate bacteria, animals and even humankind to achieve their ends and shape the natural world.In The Genius of Trees, Harriet Rix takes us on a mind-expanding, globe-spanning journey into the remarkable inner lives of trees. For the first time, we see trees not as victims, but as powerful agents of change in a grand ecological narrative - as leading actors in the great drama of life on earth who have transformed our planet and offer us hope for its future.'Exceptional . Changes our entire view of trees' ROBIN LANE FOX, Financial Times Gardening Columnist'Full of wonder and revelation' SUE STUART-SMITH, author of The Well Gardened Mind'Captivating' COUNTRY LIFE'Profoundly inventive' INDEPENDENT'A magisterial tour de force - destined to become a classic' BEN RAWLENCE, author of The Treeline.

Seller Inventory # 9781847927828

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Genius of Trees : How trees mastered the elements and shaped the world
• Publisher: Vintage Publishing Aug 2025
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1847927823
• ISBN 13: 9781847927828
• Binding: Buch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 240W x 154H x 40D millimeters 240 millimeters width by 154 millimeters height by 40 millimeters depth
• Weight: 622 grams

About this title

Synopsis

A mind-expanding exploration of how trees learned to shape our world by manipulating the elements, other species, and even humankind, possessing agency beyond anything we might have imagined

For a supposedly stationary life form, trees have demonstrated an astonishing mastery over the environment around them. They've been using fire since prehistoric times. Some tree species have gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure their fruits reach large primates, who can spread their seeds over vast distances, while poisoning smaller and less useful mammals. Others can split solid rock and create fertile ground in barren landscapes, effectively building entire ecosystems from scratch.

In The Genius of Trees, tree scientist Harriet Rix reveals the inventive ways trees sculpt their environment and explains the science of how they achieve these incredible feats. Taking us on an awe-inspiring journey through deep history and across the globe, Rix restores trees to their rightful position not as victims of our negligence, but as ingenious, stunningly inventive agents in a grand ecological narrative. Trees manipulate fundamental elements, other species, and even humankind to achieve their ends, as seen with oaks in Devon, UK, shaping ecosystems through root networks and fungi, those in Amedi, Iraq that can change sex as they get to a certain age, the laurel rainforests of the Canary Islands regulating water cycles, and metasequoias in California influencing microclimates. A recent big surprise has shown that trees have an even greater role in preventing global warming than we trees, which were thought to produce methane, actually consume it. We share one world with trees and one need for survival.

This eye-opening journey into the inner lives of nature’s most powerful plant is a profoundly new and original way of understanding both the miracles trees perform and the glories of our natural world.