How to Read a Tree

In his singular, eye-opening books about the overlooked layers of the natural world – including The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs and The Natural Navigator – Tristan Gooley helps listeners reconnect with nature by finding direction and searching for hidden clues in stars, clouds, water and more. Now, he turns his attention to perhaps nature’s most beloved feature – the stately, majestic tree.

Every single tree tells us an epic story – if we know how to read it! Here you’ll discover hundreds of astonishing secrets hiding in plain sight among the living network of branches, trunks, roots, bark, leaves, buds, flowers, stumps and more. A pale line down the centre of a leaf indicates that water is nearby; a touch of reddish or purple bark signals new growth; low-growing, young branches reveal that a tree is struggling to survive.

Tapping into this silent language of trees sharpens our understanding of the environment. To read a tree is to paint a whole new and vivid portrait of the surrounding land, soil, weather, animals, people and even time. You’ll never see a tree the same way again.