NATURE AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 TREES by Jonathan Drori (Laurence King £17.99) The first time Jonathan Drori saw his father cry was when a spectacular old Cedar of Lebanon near their home was struck by lightning. Watching its dead trunk and limbs being sawn up, the young Drori ‘thought about the huge, heavy, beautiful thing that was hundreds of years old and that I had thought invincible, and wasn’t, and my father, who I had always thought would be in benign control of everything, and wasn’t’.
After a long career at the BBC — during which he produced more than 50 science documentaries — Drori has returned to the subject of trees, and our relationships with them, to produce one of the most quietly beautiful books of the year. Jonathan Drori explores the relationship between humans and Country lacquer paintings nature (pictured) in a new book focusing on trees It takes the reader on a fascinating tour of our planet’s arboreal wonders, from the argans of Morocco — up which nimble goats climb to nibble through the fruit’s acridly bitter peel and reach the astringent pulp inside — to the Szechuan pepper of northern China.
This small tree’s tiny red fruits contain chemicals that trick the nerves in our lips and tongue into sensing vibrations ‘like licking a nine-volt battery’. The sensation is so well understood by the Chinese that they describe it with a single syllable: ‘la’. Each tree gets a page or two of text and an eye-quenching illustration by the French artist Lucille Clerc. Her thoughtful drawings combine architectural precision with a delight in structural patterns on every scale.
She sets horse chestnut leaves spinning like pinwheels, turns suburban leylandii into a witty game of aerial Tetris and compares the cone shape of a Norway spruce to the violins made from its wood. RELATED ARTICLES Previous 1 Next ‘Burton told me: I’ll just have one vodka a day — one… How to be as tough as Britain’s toughest man: Join the Paras… Share this article Share I had often wondered why the violins and cellos of the 17th and 18th century were considered so special.
Drori explains that the luthiers of the period, Antonio Stradivari and the Guarneri family, used Norway spruce grown during a ‘little ice age’ that began around the 15th century, causing slow growth, exceptionally narrow annual rings and, therefore, very stiff and consistent tonewood. Modern scientists are attempting to recreate this slow growth by inoculating newly sawn spruce with a special fungus, to eat away the non-structural part of the cells and make the wood lighter without losing rigidity.
This is only one of the many ingenious uses we’ve found to suit the Unique and successful lacquer paintings properties of specific trees. Jonathan revealed scientists are looking to the Cedar of Lebanon as a survival source for species affected by global warming (file image) Other chapters offer fresh takes. Balsa, for instance, was glued places to sell lacquer paintings in Hanoi. birch in the fuselage of Mosquito warplanes after Britain ran short of aluminium during World War II. In the plantations of Ecuador, its ice cream-cone blooms open at night to offer nectar to the capuchin monkeys, which transfer pollen on their furry limbs.