Nature

It is hard to explain the special place that orchids occupy in our hearts and imaginations. Their attraction can’t be solely attributed to their strange form, longevity, or apparent scarcity, since there are many other flowers equally blessed that are not treated with the same passionate intensity and reverence. For some reason, orchids have become imbued with some kind of mystery, desire, and exoticism that has less to do with anything intrinsic about their biology or appearance and everything to do with the stories, myths, and legends that have been created around them.

No doubt there is a diverse readership for a book about the geological evolution of Australia. In fact, the last comprehensive text intended for experts was The Geological Evolution of Australia and New Zealand (1968), by D.A. Brown, K.S.W. Campbell and K.A.W. Crook; and nothing of major scope for a lay audience has appeared for a longer time. In the past forty years, of course, the subject has advanced enormously in a general sense, not the least being the revolution in our understanding of the mobility and interactions of the outer shell of the Earth through the processes labelled ‘plate tectonics’. Our specific geological knowledge of Australia has also progressed significantly.

In Peter Wohlleben’s newest book, trees are characters, not commodities. In making his compelling case for a fresh approach to forestry, which values old-growth forests for their climate-cooling capacities, the acclaimed German forester treats trees as individuals with feelings, abilities, memories, and families. We are sometimes left to wonder what it means to say a tree feels emotions such as worry, surprise, and consideration for others, but this unapologetic anthropomorphism nevertheless invites empathy on the part of readers. It is easy to feel an affectionate second-hand embarrassment for the chestnut tree which ‘panicked’ in response to sudden rain by unfurling its blossoms too soon, or indignant on behalf of multi-centenarian beeches threatened by encroaching excavators. Seeing trees as sensate characters also provides a contrast with the unfeeling utilitarianism attributed to mainstream foresters; their industry comes off badly bruised.

The old country is, by his own admission, George Seddon’s last book. Last books are generally the products of two factors: posthumous recognition of work-in-progress, or a generous sharing of one lifetime’s accumulated wisdom. Happily, this book falls into the latter category. The opening chapter does nothing to jolt this impression; with avuncular ease, Seddon introduces his characters and stories. We sit with Uncle George at the fireside – or more realistically, given the irony of the title, around the campfire. The stream of consciousness is conversational, discursive and often intensely personal. Seddon has a gift for storytelling. While still in the roman numerals of the preface, we have a telling example: ‘The past lies at the author’s feet,’ Seddon observes epigrammatically, his boots juxtaposed over 3.5-billion-year-old stromatolites at Marble Bar in Western Australia’s far north-west. We immediately under-stand that the author’s time frame is very wide indeed. We were half expecting a gardening book – or at least a book about plants, judging from its Dewey classification – but should not be surprised by this un-conventional opening gambit. ‘We live in old landscapes with limited water and soils of low fertility,’ Seddon explains, ‘yet with a rich flora that is adapted to these conditions, as we are not. There is much to learn from it, but we have been slow learners.’

This sequel to In Defense of Animals, published twenty years ago, contains fourteen new essays, three revised essays and one that has been reprinted unchanged. Claiming that ‘philosophers served as midwives of the animal rights movement in the late 1970s’, Peter Singer devotes Part I to ‘The ideas’. The second edition displaces the now well-published philosophers found in the previous edition (e.g., Tom Regan, Stephen Clark, Mary Midgley) for a new generation of thinkers. They argue for ‘a new approach to the wrongness of killing, one that considers the individual characteristics of the being whose life is at stake, rather than that being’s species’. An arresting example is David DeGrazia’s suggestion that linguistically trained apes and dolphins are persons, while other members of their species are borderline persons. His justifications are that linguistically trained animals are exceptionally talented by comparison with their lower-IQ species confrères, and that learning a language means one is capable of more complex thought.

Botanists of the Eucalypts is a compilation of short biographies of people who have contributed to the taxonomy of our most conspicuous tree genus. The author is a retired member of the former CSIRO Forestry and Timber Bureau, where he worked extensively on eucalypts. He has prepared approximately 400 entries which collectively reveal the tremendous diversity of the people involved – professional botanists, amateur naturalists, gardeners, graziers, foresters, geologists, surveyors, explorers, anthropologists, doctors, men of the cloth, a postmaster and a police-trooper – all people able to travel and spend time out of doors. As well, the compilation includes people whose names have been commemorated even though they may have had little to do with the processes of collecting and describing new species.

The deer scene in New Zealand has changed considerably since I used to see the stags, self-segregated after the May belling, in herds of sometimes more than a hundred in the tussocky valleys behind the Lindis Pass. In a book on the hunting of what is curiously called ‘big game’ ex-professional deer culler Philip Holden reports that the biggest congregation he has seen numbered fifteen. While his mélange of loosely linked reminiscences conveys impressions of the wild terrain, the elusive quarry, the excitements of hunting and the fascination of the kill, it also indicates a growing disillusionment with the process of turning beauty into dead meat.