Tree

The story of a single tree, from the moment the seed is released from its cone until, more than five hundred years later, it lies on the forest floor as a nurse log, giving life to ferns, mosses, and hemlocks, even as its own life is ending.

"From the tiny seed of a single Douglas-fir, David Suzuki and Wayne Grady have grown a wonderful book, learned but lovely, thorough but terse. It's as big as all life."
— David Quammen, author of The Song of the Dodo and The Tangled Tree

"Read Tree. You will find wonder, magic and awe instead of the usual flight-or-fight responses elicited when we read about our ailing natural world. David Suzuki and Wayne Grady have hit exactly the right note."
—Globe and Mail

David Suzuki is an internationally renowned geneticist and environmentalist and a recipient of UNESCO’s Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science and the 2009 Right Livelihood Award. Host of the longrunning CBC television program The Nature of Things, he is also the author of more than fifty books.

Wayne Grady is one of Canada's finest science writers and a Governor General's Award-winning translator. He has authored eleven books of nonfiction, translated fourteen novels, and edited more than a dozen anthologies of short stories and creative nonfiction.

"In this slight, lovely book, [Suzuki and Grady] tell the tale of one Douglas-fir tree that lived for more than five centuries. . . . Bateman’s misty drawings offer portraits of the tree’s companions - woodpeckers, eagles, mice, ferns - whose lives are more fleeting . . . This book is both a touching look at a single tree and an articulate testimony to nature’s cyclic power." -Publishers Weekly

"Lyrical, richly detailed, and scientifically eye-opening, Suzuki's text is augmented by Robert Bateman's evocative original art. The result is a revelatory salute to life itself." -Branches of Light

"Tree explores the many amazing mechanisms by which the tree is able to thrive for hundreds of years while remaining rooted in one spot. The book also looks at the tree's rich and complex relationships with other organisms in it community . . . The story is a salute to life itself." -The Garden Island

"Suzuki and Grady's engaging biography covers 700 years in the life of a Pacific Northwest Douglas fir. Each stage in the tree's life is placed not only within the context of history but also an ecological context . . . This happy melding of history, natural history, and biography is further enhanced by Robert Bateman's fine illustrations to create an instructive and graceful look at the interconnectedness of life." -Booklist