Welcome to Our Trees

Exploring the relationships between people and trees

On a hillside overlooking Lake Toba, in Sumatra, Indonesia, stands a huge bodhi tree, Ficus religiosa. In front of the tree are statues of two men who are guarding the tree, or perhaps the tree is guarding the men. To me, this scene is evocative of the long relationships between humans and trees.

Welcome to Our Trees, where we explore the intertwined lives of people and trees. This relationship is millions of years old. Even before we were humans (Homo sapiens), our ancestors were utterly dependent on trees. Before the domestication of fire, trees provided shelter for sleeping, food in the form of fruits and leaves, clothing, and wood for making tools. It is reasonable to say that humans would not exist without trees.

This is still true. We are just as dependent on trees as our ancient ancestors, for shelter, food, and materials. Just as important, we depend on trees and forests for stabilizing our climate, maintaining biodiversity, and providing less tangible, but important, benefits. And trees can make us happy. Numerous stories and studies tell us that spending time among trees improves our satisfaction with life, and our well being.

Many people want to learn more about trees. In our increasingly urban population, regular contact with trees is essential to our well-being. This newsletter, Our Trees, exists to provide you with information about trees to enrich your experience with them. Its long-term goal is to help people enrich their experience with trees, their understanding of our relationships with trees, and their enjoyment of the natural world.

Free subscribers to Our Trees will receive a newsletter every 2-3 weeks discussing some aspect of trees and our relationships. The newsletter is based on science, but is not technical, and is meant to be read by everyone. Paid subscribers will receive an additional installment called Tree Stories, which explore an individual tree, or tree species. Paid subscribers will also have the opportunity to comment on our stories. Founding subscribers not only provide tremendous support to our work, but will have several opportunities for enrichment, including engaging in discussions with the author and helping steer the direction of the newsletter by suggesting topics.

Although we will not use much technical language, and Our Trees will be easy to read, we will use Latin names for organisms as well as common names. There is a simple reason for this: common names can cause confusion. For example if we ask what is a sycamore tree, a person in the Mediterranean will think of a fig, Ficus; a person in England will think of a maple, Acer; and a person in North America will think of a plane tree, Platanus. To avoid confusion, when we discuss a sycamore, we need to use the Latin name.

Who is the author of Our Trees? I am a forest scientist who specializes in the physiology and biochemistry of trees. That means I work to understand the lives of trees - how they reproduce, grow, and live their very long lives. I am particularly interested in the longevity of trees. My first book, Venerable Trees, is about the immensely long lives of trees in the Bluegrass of Kentucky, where I live. I spent many years as a university professor, working in the United States, Indonesia, and Malaysia. In recent years, I have been a consultant helping landowners manage their ancient trees. This newsletter is part of a larger project to improve our understanding of trees, and includes a book, Our Trees, which is the main focus of my work at present.

I am also a professional nature photographer, with a catalog of many thousands of photos of trees and forests. Our Trees will feature many of those photos. I am also an avid explorer of forests and have spent many months in forests seeking to know them better. Although I write this newsletter from the perspective of a forest scientist, I hope you also will come to understand my deep love and enjoyment of trees and forests.

My hope is that this newsletter will not only deepen our understanding of trees and forests, but will help us to better connect with the natural world. I will post several more stories in the next few weeks to give you a better feel for what you may gain from subscribing to Our Trees.