 | Biologist David George Haskell uses observations in a one-square-meter patch of forest to deeply explore the forest and expand our understanding of the interrelatedness of all life. There are many surprising delights scattered throughout The Forest Unseen. The most intense anecdote is when he decides to strip naked during winter to compare his body’s response to the frigid temperatures to that of birds (Ouch!). |
FUN FACTS from the book:
 | Lichens, “don’t cling to water as plants do. A lichen body swells on damp days, then puckers as the air dries.” [And} "Lichens are amalgrams of two creatures: a fungus and either an alga or a bacterium [living in symbiosis]." |
Snow: “Seen closely, the snow is a tangle of mirrored stars, each one flashing as its surface aligns with the sun and my eyes.”
 | Snails: “Each individual is both a donor and recipient of sperm, male and female united in one body." [But], "Nature has no shortage of new sexual ideas: every generation of snails has a few individuals that are unisexual” |
Photosynthesis: “Inside plant cells, light-harvesting molecules respond to changing light minute by minute, assembling and disassembling as needed.”
 | Katydids: “The sound of every snap and pop is amplified by membranes and an air-filled sac inside the cicada’s body. These corrugated discs, called tymbals, are unique in the animal world.” |
Caterpillars: “In most forests they consume more leaves than all other herbivores combined.”
 | Birds: “Each feather is a fan of interlocking blades, organized around a central support, the rachis. This rachis is anchored in the skin by a cluster of muscles that the bird uses to tweak each feather’s position [individually during flight].” |
Tree “vision”: "The whole plant is permeated with phytochromes, so trees act like large eyes, sensing color over their entire bodies.”
 | Fungi: “fungi use chemical signals to sense [their gender] and will reproduce only with a mating type that differs from their own. Some fungus species has two mating types, but others have thousands.” |
The author’s language is often poetic:
“The leaf litter seems to have no upper surface; the rotting leaves simply bleed upward and turn into dark wet air.”
The forest “is not a banquet waiting for guests to arrive but a devil’s buffet of poisoned plates from which herbivores [plant eaters] snatch the least deadly morsels.”
“No one knows how [ticks climb our skin without us feeling them], but I suspect they charm our nerve endings, taming cobralike neurons with the hypnotic music of their feet.”
“Unlike the dawn chorus of birds in the springtime, the fall-breeding crickets are loudest in midafternoon, when their bodies have sponged the day’s heat.”
“As rain patter turns to squall, the [forest] canopy heaves under the pressure of the wind. The trunks sway to and fro, flexing beyond what looks possible, then slashing back.”
“Yearly the ground heaves like a belly, swelling in a rapid inhalation in October, then sinking as the life force [of fallen leaves] is suffused into the forest’s body.”
“The leaf litter seems to have no upper surface; the rotting leaves simply bleed upward and turn into dark wet air.”
The forest “is not a banquet waiting for guests to arrive but a devil’s buffet of poisoned plates from which herbivores [plant eaters] snatch the least deadly morsels.”
“No one knows how [ticks climb our skin without us feeling them], but I suspect they charm our nerve endings, taming cobralike neurons with the hypnotic music of their feet.”
“Unlike the dawn chorus of birds in the springtime, the fall-breeding crickets are loudest in midafternoon, when their bodies have sponged the day’s heat.”
“As rain patter turns to squall, the [forest] canopy heaves under the pressure of the wind. The trunks sway to and fro, flexing beyond what looks possible, then slashing back.”
“Yearly the ground heaves like a belly, swelling in a rapid inhalation in October, then sinking as the life force [of fallen leaves] is suffused into the forest’s body.”
On our human relationship with our natural world:
“Our biggest failing is, after all, a lack of compassion for the world. Including ourselves.”
“Bacteria, protists, mites, and nematodes make their homes on the mountains of our bodies, hidden from us by the dislocation of [their smaller] scale.”
“Our biggest failing is, after all, a lack of compassion for the world. Including ourselves.”
“Bacteria, protists, mites, and nematodes make their homes on the mountains of our bodies, hidden from us by the dislocation of [their smaller] scale.”
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