How about a book that feels like sitting down with under a tree with renowned envirobmentalist David Suzuki, as he gives a magesterial, stem-winding biography of it. Yes, a biography of a tree. Or perhaps it's a botanograpy? Anyway, I throoughly enjoyed a masterful teacher skilfully sliding from topic to topic in a supernaturally informed lecture which somehow never feels exhaustive in the manner of a textbook.

I am, admittedly, very into trees. Anyone else here will find startling facts, pleasing reveries and memorable anecdotes. Somehow he covers the implications of the similarity of hemoglobin to chlorophyll, the life of a galapogos tomato whose seeds can only germinate if they pass through the digestive system of a tortoise, and many more tangents through lichens and salmon, sunlight and spotted owls, but it is all, satisfyingly, in the service of the story of a single tree from the instant the seed is released from a cone until, hundreds of years later, it lives on as a nurse log on the forest floor, fostering the life of a future generation.