The secret life of trees : how they live and why they matter

'Everyone interested in the natural world will enjoy "The Secret Life of Trees".

I found myself reading out whole chunks to friends' - "The Times", Books of the Year.

What is a tree? As this celebration of the trees shows, they are our countryside; our ancestors descended from them; they gave us air to breathe.

Yet while the stories of trees are as plentiful as leaves in a forest, they are rarely told.

Here, Colin Tudge travels from his own back garden round the world to explore the beauty, variety and ingenuity of trees everywhere: from how they live so long to how they talk to each other and why they came to exist in the first place.

Lyrical and evocative, this book will make everyone fall in love with the trees around them.