Colin Tudge

�Everyone interested in the natural world will enjoy The Secret Life of Trees. I found myself reading out whole chunks to friends� The Times, Books of the Year What is a tree? As this celebration of the trees shows, they are our countryside; our ancestors descended from them; they gave us air to breathe. Yet while the stories of trees are as plentiful as leaves in a forest, they are rarely told. Here, Colin Tudge travels from his own back garden round the world to explore the beauty, variety and ingenuity of trees everywhere: from how they live so long to how they talk to each other and why they came to exist in the first place. Lyrical and evocative, this book will make everyone fall in love with the trees around them.

How They Live and Why They Matter

The Secret Life of Trees

Looks at the world of trees, journeying around the world to explore the facts, characteristics, natural history, life cycles, evolution, and environmental impact of trees and forests.

a natural history of what trees are, how they live, and why they matter

The tree

Josh Young

Colin Tudge tells the history of Ida--a perfectly fossilized early primate predating the most famous primate fossil, Lucy, by 44 million years--and her place in the world. At the same time, he explains how Ida opens a stunningly evocative window into ourp

Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor

The Link

A Natural History of what Trees Are, how They Live, and why They Matter

The Tree

A Survey and a Celebration of All the Creatures that Have Ever Lived

The Variety of Life

For more than a century, scientists have raced to unravel the human family tree and have grappled with its complications. Now, with an astonishing new discovery, everything we thought we knew about primate origins could change. Lying inside a high-security vault, deep within the heart of one of the world's leading natural history museums, is the scientific find of a lifetime - a perfectly fossilized early primate, older than the previously most famous primate fossil, Lucy, by forty-four million years.

A gift-appropriate follow-up to The Tree explains the evolutionary origins and future prospects of the avian class, covering such topics as the first proto-bird-dinosaurs and the differences between birds and mammals, in a guide that also introduces bird taxonomic order.

A Natural History of who Birds Are, where They Came From, and how They Live

The Bird

Drawing on the findings of geology, anthropology, archaeology and earth science, Colin Tudge discusses in detail and intertwines histories of the planet Earth and the evolution of humankind.

The Time Before History

Discusses the importance of science supporting rather than replacing agricultural methods with GMOs (genetically modified organisms) to continue feeding the world's population and the obstacles blocking this goal.

Feeding People is Easy

A People's Takeover of the World's Food Supply

Good Food for Everyone Forever

Esther M. Brown

Science Writer and Broadcaster Former Editor Colin Tudge

A guide to to the science and art of classification describes the main animal and plant groups, from the primitive prokaryotes, to homo sapiens, to the 1800 species of plant within the genus Eupatorium.

A blend of history, science, philosophy, and environmentalism, The Tree is an engaging and elegant look at the life of the tree and what modern research tells us about their future. There are redwoods in California that were ancient by the time Columbus first landed, and pines still alive that germinated around the time humans invented writing. There are Douglas firs as tall as skyscrapers, and a banyan tree in Calcutta as big as a football field. From the tallest to the smallest, trees inspire wonder in all of us, and in The Tree, Colin Tudge travels around the world—throughout the United States, the Costa Rican rain forest, Panama and Brazil, India, New Zealand, China, and most of Europe—bringing to life stories and facts about the trees around us: how they grow old, how they eat and reproduce, how they talk to one another (and they do), and why they came to exist in the first place. He considers the pitfalls of being tall; the things that trees produce, from nuts and rubber to wood; and even the complicated debt that we as humans owe them. Tudge takes us to the Amazon in flood, when the water is deep enough to submerge the forest entirely and fish feed on fruit while river dolphins race through the canopy. He explains the “memory” of a tree: how those that have been shaken by wind grow thicker and sturdier, while those attacked by pests grow smaller leaves the following year; and reveals how it is that the same trees found in the United States are also native to China (but not Europe). From tiny saplings to centuries-old redwoods and desert palms, from the backyards of the American heartland to the rain forests of the Amazon and the bamboo forests, Colin Tudge takes the reader on a journey through history and illuminates our ever-present but often ignored companions.

A Natural History of What Trees Are, How They Live, and Why They Matter

Whatever living thing the reader comes across, from E coli to an oak tree or an elephant, this volume aims to show what kind of creature it is, and how it relates to all the others. Yet there are far too many creatures to present merely as a catalogue.

The astonishing new discovery that could change everything . . . Lying inside a high-security vault, deep within the heart of one of the world's leading natural history museums, is the scientific find of a lifetime - a perfectly fossilized early primate, older than the previously most famous primate fossil, Lucy, by an astonishing forty-four million years. A secret until now, the fossil - 'Ida'- is the most complete early primate fossil ever found. Forty-seven million years old, Ida rewrites what we've assumed about the earliest primate origins. Her completeness is unparalleled. With exclusive access to the first scientists to study her, the award-winning science writer Colin Tudge tells the history of Ida and her place in the world. The Link offers a wide-ranging investigation into Ida and our earliest origins - and the magnificent, cutting-edge scientific detective story that followed her discovery. At the same time it opens a stunningly evocative window into our past and changes what we know about primate evolution and, ultimately, our own.

A gift-appropriate follow-up to The Tree explains the evolutionary origins and future prospects of the avian class, covering such topics as the first proto-bird-dinosaurs and the differences between birds and mammals, in a guide that also introduces bird taxonomic order. Reprint. A best-selling book.

A work that focuses on the relentless drive for maximum food production at rock-bottom cost. As health scares spiral, rural workers are driven off the land and poor nations are forced to export their goods in a cut-throat marketplace. Colin Trudge proposes an alternative, looking at the global food industry and showing how - without resorting to GM crops - corporate barons can be stripped of control, the world can be fed and humanity can survive.

What's Gone Wrong with the World's Food - and How to Fix it

So Shall We Reap

In the 1850s and 1860s, growing peas in his monastery garden in Brno in Moravia, Augustinian friar Gregor Mendel worked out the basic laws of heredity. Colin Tudge argues that once what Mendel is understood, subsequent advances fall naturally into place and light is thrown on humanity's future.

An Introduction to the Science and Technologies of Genes and Genetics from the Nineteenth Century to the Twenty-second

In Mendel's Footnotes

Colin Tudge coined the expression "Enlightened Agriculture" to describe agriculture that is "expressly designed to provide everyone, everywhere, with food of the highest standard, nutritionally and gastronomically, without wrecking the rest of the world". In Six Steps Back to the Land, he explains how we can achieve that, and have truly sustainable, resilient and productive farms, looking at: why we need to rethink our approach to farming; how we can move to low-input mixed farms; how tightly-integrated farms employ many skilled peop≤ dealing with the practicalities of this form of farming in today's world; and how we can get involved. Six Steps will inspire anyone to take an interest in our food chain and make a difference.

Colin Tudge

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