Teaching the Trees, Joan Maloof
Teaching the Trees, Joan Maloof
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Teaching the Trees
Lessons from the Forest

Author: Joan Maloof

Narrator: Donna Postel

Unabridged: 4 hr 13 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 10/15/2019

Categories: Nonfiction, Nature, Plants


Synopsis

In this collection of natural-history essays, biologist Joan Maloof embarks on a series of lively, fact-filled expeditions into forests of the eastern United States. Through Maloof's engaging, conversational style, each essay offers a lesson in stewardship as it explores the interwoven connections between a tree species and the animals and insects whose lives depend on it—and who, in turn, work to ensure the tree's survival.

Never really at home in a laboratory, Maloof took to the woods early in her career. Her enthusiasm for firsthand observation in the wild spills over into her writing, whether the subject is the composition of forest air, the eagle's preference for nesting in loblolly pines, the growth rings of the bald cypress, or the gray squirrel's fondness for weevil-infested acorns. With a storyteller's instinct for intriguing particulars, Maloof expands our notions about what a tree "is" through her many asides—about the six species of leafhoppers who eat only sycamore leaves or the midges who live inside holly berries and somehow prevent them from turning red.

As a scientist, Maloof accepts that trees have a spiritual dimension that cannot be quantified. As an unrepentant tree hugger, she finds support in the scientific case for biodiversity. As an activist, she can't help but wonder how much time is left for our forests.

About Joan Maloof

Joan Maloof is a scientist, writer, and the founder and director of the Old-Growth Forest network, a nonprofit organization creating a network of forests across the US that will remain forever unlogged and open to the public. She studied plant science at the University of Delaware, environmental science at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, and ecology at the University of Maryland College Park. She is the author of Teaching the Trees and Among the Ancients.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Christie on May 22, 2021

Something about this book wasn't sitting with me in ways that I couldn't articulate. Then the author compared nursing a sick tree (instead of chopping it) to a woman reflecting on not having an abortion after her child has grown and thrived. Can we all acknowledge that some women terminate their pre......more

Goodreads review by Charlene on July 10, 2021

Essays about trees that are a mixture of personal stories & information on various common Southern tree species -- I read this book over a couple of months, enjoying each chapter. Author is a biologist at a Maryland university & has both the heart and knowledge for trees. Enjoyed learning that the b......more

Goodreads review by Irene on May 23, 2022

This was more inspiring than informative, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Maloof mixes the feeling she gets from Rilke's poetry (also a bit of Thoreau and Whitman) into her conservation efforts. Her aim is to preserve the few old growth forests left in her home, discourage further deforestat......more

Goodreads review by Angela on November 16, 2017

I had the fortune of hearing Joan Maloof speak at a conference. I snatched up the last copy of this book and she signed it. I enjoyed reading these short essays about some of our native tree species and the complex life cycles of the little-known insects who depend on them. She has a meandering styl......more

Goodreads review by Sylvia on January 10, 2014

This book is full of fairytale-like stories about the complex interrelationships among organisms, such as beech trees, tway-blade orchids, which only grow under beech trees, their pollinating fungus gnats, and several fungus species that make it all possible. It's also full of anger and sadness abou......more