Sumana Roy— In How I Became a Tree, I was looking for people who had wanted to become or live like a tree. Since then, I’ve been trying to speculate in the opposite direction – what might it mean for plant life to live in the human social world? How I Became
Charles D. Canham— The northeast is one of the country’s most thoroughly forested regions, with forests covering two-thirds of the nine northeastern states. But that statistic belies the extraordinary wave of logging and clearing of land for agriculture that followed European settlement 400 years ago. In the Mid-Hudson Valley where
Sonja Dümpelmann— Multitasking Trees Since their systematic planting throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, street trees have fulfilled various purposes in our cities. They have been considered variously as aesthetic make-up and creators of space; as territorial markers and instruments of defense, emancipation, and empowerment; as sanitizers and air conditioners;
Edward Dallam Melillo— On October 31, 1967, California governor Ronald Reagan addressed seventy-three diplomats, businesspeople, and academics who had assembled in Sacramento for the fourth annual Chile-California Conference. As the former Hollywood actor and future US president told his audience, “Well, Chile is something special to California, and to Californians
Fiona Stafford— In spring, you can feel life stirring in the barest twigs and the silhouetted catkins look as if a diminutive duck has run across the sky. One day the twigs are just beginning to thicken and brighten and bulge; by the next they are covered in pincer-paired leaves
Fiona Stafford— At a secret location somewhere in the White Mountains of California is the world’s oldest individual tree. This ancient Great Basin bristlecone pine (pinus longaeva) has been growing there for more than 5,000 years, at least two centuries longer than its nearest rival, which is a mere 4,850,
Peter Crane— Recent estimates suggest that there are roughly three trillion trees in the world, almost half the number that are thought to have existed prior to their widespread use and manipulation by people over the past 10,000 years. Every year it is estimated that perhaps 15 billion trees are
Follow @yaleSCIbooks Perhaps you’ve seen in the news or read in an article about the possible health benefits of ginkgo biloba for improving memory and for slowing down cognitive function decline in dementia patients. More than just the focus of a modern day health craze, however, ginkgo is one of