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Peter Wohlleben

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8 min read

Age & reading levelAdult
Reader rating
4.7 · 13,679 Amazon ratings
reader ratings, not a LuvemBooks score
$14.34 on AmazonAudiobook
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Front cover of The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate―Discoveries from

Our review

The Hidden Life of Trees

The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben Review: A Landmark Work of Popular Nature Science

by Peter Wohlleben

Peter Wohlleben's The Hidden Life of Trees, originally published in Germany as Das geheime Leben der Bäume and released in English by Greystone Books in 2016, makes a quietly revolutionary argument: that forests are social networks, and that trees communicate, nurture their young, share resources with the sick, and warn one another of danger. A New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal bestseller, it is one of the defining works of popular nature science of the past decade, and its reach has only grown since its first English-language edition.

$14.34 on Amazon
Image from the Amazon listing for The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate―Discoveries from by Peter WohllebenHardcover book spine and side showing title, author name, and forest imagery with trees.Back cover with title, author name, and endorsement quotes from nature writers and scientists.Tap to enlarge
Adult

LuvemBooks Verdict

Best for

Curious general readers — walkers, nature lovers, or anyone drawn to writers like Robin Wall Kimmerer or Robert Macfarlane — who want an accessible, wonder-driven introduction to how forests function as interconnected social communities.

Worth it if

You're willing to meet Wohlleben's anthropomorphizing language as a deliberate bridge into complex ecological science rather than a demand for strict literal precision — the cumulative portrait of the forest as a cooperative, communicating community is genuinely illuminating on those terms.

Skip if

Readers with a specialist background in biology or ecology who want a rigorously qualified, academically framed treatment of mycorrhizal networks and tree behaviour will likely find the metaphor-heavy, popular-science register frustrating rather than enlightening.

The Guardian's review describes the book as "eye-opening," noting that Wohlleben draws on decades of experience as a forester to reframe trees as "wondrous organisms, as complex as any animal" and "social beings." The ESA Journals (Ecological Society of America) acknowledge it became a bestseller "not without generating considerable controversy," pointing to ongoing scientific debate around its claims — a tension the book's own popular framing invites.

“Wohlleben draws on decades of experience as a forester — his aim is to let us see forests not just as 'lumber factories' but as wondrous organisms, as complex as any animal.”

— The Guardian
Sources: The Guardian, ESA Journals (Ecological Society of America)
4.7from 13,679 Amazon ratings— reader ratings, not a LuvemBooks score

Preview the book

Front cover of The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate―Discoveries from
Image from the Amazon listing for The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate―Discoveries from by Peter Wohlleben
Hardcover book spine and side showing title, author name, and forest imagery with trees.
Back cover with title, author name, and endorsement quotes from nature writers and scientists.
Image from the Amazon listing for The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate―Discoveries from by Peter Wohlleben

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The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben reframes the forest as a living social world — one where trees communicate through underground fungal networks, nurture their young, and warn neighbors of danger — and became a New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal bestseller for doing so with both scientific grounding and evident passion. Its greatest strength and its central caveat are the same thing: Wohlleben's deliberate use of human-scale analogies (family, friendship, mutual aid) makes complex ecological science widely accessible, but readers seeking a rigorously qualified academic treatment may find the anthropomorphizing framing stretches beyond what the underlying research strictly supports. Ideal for the curious general reader who has ever wondered what is happening beneath the forest canopy.
Is it worth reading?
For general readers curious about the natural world, The Hidden Life of Trees delivers — it is a New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal bestseller that The New York Review of Books called a work that 'breaks entirely new ground,' and its award record includes the Indie Choice Award for Nonfiction Book of the Year and a Books For a Better Life Award. Wohlleben's achievement is genuine: he translates complex ecological science — tree communication, resource-sharing, chemical warning systems — into vivid, human-scale language without losing the underlying science entirely. The key caveat is that readers with a background in biology or ecology may find the anthropomorphizing framing (describing trees as experiencing friendship, love, and social obligation) more rhetorical than the research strictly supports. For its intended audience of curious general readers, it remains one of the defining works of popular nature science of the past decade.
Similar books
Readers who responded to The Hidden Life of Trees tend to gravitate toward books that treat the natural world's hidden complexity with both scientific seriousness and literary warmth. Ed Yong's An Immense World explores how animal senses reveal hidden realms of perception — a comparable exercise in making the non-human interior life feel vivid and real. Jonathan Balcombe's What a Fish Knows undertakes a similar project for fish, arguing that their inner lives are far richer than assumed. Also closely related is Suzanne Simard's Finding the Mother Tree, whose afterword already appears in Wohlleben's volume — Simard's own account of mycorrhizal network research is the direct scientific companion to his argument. Merlin Sheldrake's Entangled Life, which maps the role of fungi in connecting and sustaining living systems, and Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass, which weaves Indigenous plant knowledge with botanical science, round out a shelf of books that share Wohlleben's conviction that the natural world has a social and communicative life worth attending to.
Who should read this?
The Hidden Life of Trees is designed for the general reader with a curiosity about the natural world — anyone who has walked through a forest and wondered what is happening beneath the canopy and between the roots. Its chapter-by-chapter structure, accessible prose, and vivid analogies suit readers who enjoy popular science that is emotionally engaging as well as informative, and those drawn to writers like Robin Wall Kimmerer or Robert Macfarlane will find Wohlleben operating in a recognizable register. It is not aimed at specialists: readers seeking a rigorously technical or academically qualified treatment of forest ecology may find the book's metaphor-driven style too popular in register. It also serves as the ideal starting point for readers new to Wohlleben, as it is the first entry in his three-volume Mysteries of Nature series.
About Peter Wohlleben
Peter Wohlleben is a German forester and author who writes on ecological themes in popular language and has controversially argued for plant sentience.
What are the main themes?
At the heart of the book is the argument that forests are social networks governed by interdependence, mutual aid, and communication — not merely collections of individual organisms competing for resources. Wohlleben explores tree communication via underground fungal channels, the nurturing of offspring by parent trees, resource-sharing with sick or weakened neighbors, and the transmission of chemical warnings against insect threats. Running beneath these specific claims is a larger theme about the limits of human perception: that the natural world is performing complex, socially meaningful activity that most people walk past without noticing. The chapter titles — 'Friendships,' 'Social Security,' 'Tree School,' 'United We Stand, Divided We Fall' — signal that Wohlleben is also engaged in a deliberate act of reframing, asking readers to see the forest through a social and almost ethical lens.
Where to start with Wohlleben?
The Hidden Life of Trees is the explicit starting point: it is the first entry in Wohlleben's three-volume Mysteries of Nature series, and its chapter structure and accessible analogies make it the most approachable introduction to his thinking. Readers who find the framework compelling — that non-human living systems have social and communicative lives worth attending to — can follow it with The Inner Life of Animals, the second volume, which applies the same lens to the animal world.
Summarize this book

Summarize this book

The Hidden Life of Trees poses a single arresting question — are trees social beings? — and builds a book-length answer that is an emphatic yes. Peter Wohlleben draws on scientific research to present forests as functioning social networks where tree parents live alongside their offspring, communicate through underground fungal channels, share nutrients with sick or weakened neighbors, and transmit chemical warnings of insect threats. Structured as a series of topical chapters — among them 'Friendships,' 'The Language of Trees,' 'Tree School,' and 'United We Stand, Divided We Fall' — the book layers these discoveries into a coherent portrait of the forest as an interdependent community. The English edition, translated by Jane Billinghurst, includes a foreword by scientist Tim Flannery and an afterword by forest ecologist Suzanne Simard, whose own mycorrhizal network research aligns closely with Wohlleben's central claims.

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Our Review

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A New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal bestseller, this book reframes the forest as a living social world — and it does so with scientific grounding and evident passion.

What the Book Actually Argues

Hardcover book spine and side showing title, author name, and forest imagery with trees.
Hardcover book spine and side showing title, author name, and forest imagery with trees.
At its core, The Hidden Life of Trees poses a single, arresting question — are trees social beings? — and builds a book-length answer that is an emphatic yes. Forester and author Peter Wohlleben draws on scientific discoveries to present forests as functioning social networks, where tree parents live alongside their offspring, communicate through underground fungal channels, share nutrients with sick or weakened neighbors, and transmit chemical warnings of impending threats from insects or disease.
The book is structured as a series of topical chapters — among them "Friendships," "The Language of Trees," "Social Security," "Tree School," and "United We Stand, Divided We Fall" — each peeling back a different layer of forest behavior. Wohlleben also reflects on processes of life, death, and regeneration he has witnessed firsthand over his career as a forester, grounding the science in a specific, lived landscape.

Significance and Reception

The book's cultural footprint is substantial and well-documented. It is a New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal bestseller — all three designations appearing in its own promotional record — and it received an Honorable Mention for the SEJ Rachel Carson Environment Book Award, was shortlisted for the Audible International Book of the Year Award, and won a Books For a Better Life Award and an Indie Choice Award for Nonfiction Book of the Year.
The New York Review of Books called it a work that "breaks entirely new ground," writing that Wohlleben "has listened to trees and decoded their language. Now he speaks for them." The publisher's own description calls it "one of the most beloved books of our time," and the breadth of its award recognition supports that characterization.
The English translation, by Jane Billinghurst, is accompanied by a foreword from scientist and author Tim Flannery and an afterword by forest ecologist Suzanne Simard, whose own research on mycorrhizal networks aligns closely with the book's central claims.
Back cover with title, author name, and endorsement quotes from nature writers and scientists.
Back cover with title, author name, and endorsement quotes from nature writers and scientists.

Strengths: Science Made Vivid and Accessible

Wohlleben's primary achievement is the translation of complex ecological research into the language of everyday experience. By framing tree behavior in terms readers already understand — family bonds, friendship, mutual aid, childhood, old age — he makes a body of science that might otherwise remain academic feel immediate and personally significant.
The chapter structure reinforces this: each section is self-contained enough to be read independently, yet the cumulative effect builds a coherent portrait of the forest as an interdependent community. The contributions of Simard and Flannery lend the volume additional scientific credibility, situating Wohlleben's observations within a broader scholarly conversation.

Genuine Limitations

The book's anthropomorphizing approach — its central strength for general readers — is also the point most likely to give pause to scientifically cautious readers. By describing trees as experiencing something analogous to love, friendship, and social obligation, Wohlleben invites a kind of interpretive leap that not all readers will make comfortably.
Some readers, particularly those with a background in biology or ecology, have noted that the book's rhetorical warmth occasionally outruns strict scientific precision, and that the move from observed tree behavior to concepts like "feeling" and "communication" involves a degree of metaphorical license. This is not a failing of scientific accuracy so much as a deliberate editorial choice — one that makes the book widely readable but may frustrate those seeking a more rigorously qualified treatment of the research.

Who This Book Is For

The Hidden Life of Trees is designed for the general reader with a curiosity about the natural world, not a specialist audience. Its chapter-by-chapter structure, accessible prose, and vivid analogies make it well-suited to anyone who has walked through a forest and wondered what is happening beneath the canopy and between the roots.
Readers drawn to the work of writers like Robin Wall Kimmerer or Robert Macfarlane will find Wohlleben operating in a similar register — where rigorous observation and genuine wonder are not in conflict. The book is the first entry in the three-volume Mysteries of Nature series, making it a natural starting point for readers who find its framework compelling and want to follow Wohlleben's thinking further.

Sources & Further Reading

The key facts and claims in this review are grounded in the retrieved, verified sources listed below.

  1. Cited in this review
  2. 1
    The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate-Discoveries from A Secret World by Peter Wohlleben, Paperback | Barnes & Noble®

    barnesandnoble.com

  3. 2
    The hidden life of trees : what they feel, how they communicate : discoveries from a secret world : Wohlleben, Peter, 1964- author : Free Download, Bo

    archive.org

  4. Further reading
  5. 3
    Peter Wohlleben — author profile

    Peter Wohlleben, LuvemBooks

  6. 4
    The Hidden Life of Trees — Peter Wohlleben

    peterwohllebenbooks.com

  7. 5
    The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate―Discoveries from a Secret World (Hardcover) - Nature Connection Guide

    natureconnectionguide.com

  8. 6
    The Hidden Life of Trees – Greystone Books Ltd.

    greystonebooks.com

  9. 7
    Facts or Fairy Tales? Peter Wohlleben and the Hidden Life of Trees - Kingsland - 2018 - The Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America - Wiley Onli

    esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

  10. 8
    The Guardian

    The Guardian

Age & Reading Level

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Adult

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Skip if you want a rigorously technical or academically qualified treatment of forest ecology rather than an accessible, metaphor-driven popular-science account.

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More by Peter Wohlleben

On Amazon

The Heartbeat of Trees: Embracing Our Ancient Bond with Forests and Nature

Peter Wohlleben

Same author, deeper focus: Wohlleben turns to our emotional and sensory connection with forests, extending the science into personal practice for readers who wanted more after Hidden Life.

Where The Hidden Life of Trees mapped the inner world of trees, this follow-up shifts the lens onto us — how humans perceive, need, and have historically related to forests. Wohlleben draws on research showing that time in woods measurably alters our physiology and mood. Best for readers who finished the first book wanting not just more science but a reason to go outside.

If you liked The Hidden Life of Trees

In our catalogue

The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Changes Everything

Zoë Schlanger

Reported science journalism on plant cognition that takes the same core question — are plants more alive than we think? — and applies rigorous lab scrutiny alongside Wohlleben's wonder.

In our catalogue

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Shape Our Understanding of Reality

Ed Yong

Parallel project in animal biology: Yong defamiliarizes creatures the way Wohlleben defamiliarizes trees, revealing rich sensory worlds hidden from casual observation.

In our catalogue

What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins

Jonathan Balcombe

Same genre move — science that upends assumptions about a misunderstood group of living things — applied to fish: social, feeling, far more capable than received wisdom allows.

In our catalogue

The Inner Life of Cats: The Science and Secrets of Our Enigmatic Companions

Thomas McNamee

Accessible science that humanizes an often-misread species — same empathetic lens as Wohlleben, applied to an animal billions of people share their homes with.

In our catalogue

Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology

Johnjoe McFadden, Jim Al-Khalili

Reveals hidden physical processes inside living things — quantum effects in photosynthesis, bird navigation, enzyme reactions — that are as counterintuitive as Wohlleben's underground networks.

Not your thing?

In our catalogue

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Carl Sagan

For readers who wanted sharper skepticism: Sagan models how to hold genuine wonder and rigorous critical thinking together, without letting analogy slide into overreach.