A compelling global exploration of nature and survival as seen via a dozen species of trees
that represent the challenges facing our planet and the ways that scientists are working
urgently to save our forests and our future. The world today is undergoing the most rapid
environmental transformation in human history-from climate change to deforestation. Scientists
ethnobotanists indigenous peoples and collectives of all kinds are closely studying trees and
their biology to understand how and why trees function individually and collectively in the
ways they do. In Twelve Trees Daniel Lewis curator and historian at one of the world's most
renowned research libraries travels the world to learn about these trees in their habitats.
Lewis takes us on a sweeping journey to plant breeding labs botanical gardens research
facilities deep inside museum collections to the tops of tall trees underwater and around
the Earth journeying into the deserts of the American west and the deep jungles of Peru to
offer a globe-spanning perspective on the crucial impact trees have on our entire planet. When
a once-common tree goes extinct in the wild but survives in a botanical garden what happens
next? How can scientists reconstruct lost genomes and habitats? How does a tree store thousands
of gallons of water or offer up perfectly preserved insects from millions of years ago or
root itself in muddy swamps and remain standing? How does a 5 000-year-old tree manage to live
and what can we learn from it? And how can science account for the survival of one species at
the expense of others? To study the science of trees is to study not just the present but the
story of the world its past and its future. Note-species include: * The Lost Tree of Easter
Island (Sophora toromiro) * The coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) * Hymenaea protera [a
fossil tree] * The Longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) * East Indian sandalwood (Santanum album) *
The Bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) * West African ebony (Diospyros crassiflora) * The
Tasmanian blue gum eucalyptus (Eucalyptus globulus) * Olive tree (Olea europaea) * Baobab
(Adansonia digitata) * the kapok tree (Ceiba pentandra) * The bald cypress (Taxodium distichum)
