The Global Forest

Finished August 11
The Global Forest by Diana Beresford-Kroeger
Beresbord-Kroeger is a botanist and medical biochemist and an expert on medicinal, environmental, and nutritional properties of trees.
This book links that knowledge with a poetic style to celebrate trees, mourn losses, and educate the reader. Told in short chapters that echo traditional storytelling, Beresford-Kroeger shows how trees are a part of the larger environment, giving examples of how they interact with other plants, insects, animals and man. She shows how trees help each other out, and explains the role of mother trees in a forest. She tells us how they breathe, providing us with the oxygen we need and converting or storing our waste carbon. She shows how the trees green chlorophyll echoes our own red hemoglobin in function and movement through the living. She shows how they provide food, shelter, medicine, and comfort to other living entities, including us. The connections she explains are eye-opening. She makes several arguments for change in how we treat these important elements of the earth, and hopefully we are listening.
A wonderful lyrical read, although it did have me reaching for my dictionary from time to time for scientific terms and other wonderfully new words. The short chapters offer just enough to ponder upon before going on the the next one.