Sprout Lands: Tending the Endless Gift of Trees Hardcover – Illustrated, March 26, 2019

An excellent, engagingly written overview of one of humanity's few mutually beneficial interactions with nature. The author describes the many ways different society's across time and space have managed forests and woody plants to provide food, building materials, tools, and other elements of civilized life. The undercurrent of the book is that there is a beauty, both physical and spiritual, to these time honored methods developed by generations of people living close to the land. I can't recommend it highly enough.

I am familiar with both pollards and coppicing, but didn't know much about the history, uses or some of the specifics. Not only did this book give lots of factual information in a very understandable way, but interwove the facts with the experiences of the author as he searched for people with knowledge of these processes. Fascinating, well written. I had difficulty laying the book down. I finished it in a couple of days.

I have not yet finished, but am very happy to have purchased the book to open my mind to using the forest as a sustainable resource (given to my own devices I'd never cut down a tree unless it was diseased or threatening my home and even diseased unless it was a threat to other trees I'd probably leave it as long as I could to provide food for birds, etc.)

This book is extremely well-written. It covers a plethora of human-tree interactions with a semi-scientific approach and covers decades. It is not a soppy, tree-hugger book, but manages to reflect a relationship.

Thoughtful book. Chapters are self contained essays. Learn a lot about what it was like when communities worked WITH nature instead of pillaging our resources. A wonderful book, part science, part philosophy.

Fascinating look at how people have managed trees and forests for 1000s of years. Knowledge essentially lost in the last 200.

This is a really great book well written.

The entirety of this book concerns radical pruning of trees. When I say radical, I am talking radical. Unless you are trying to make trees into an art form, try something else.

日本の雑木林のように木を切ると切り株から新しい枝が伸びて再び幹となるという再生が、世界中で様々な形で利用されてきたことを、世界を回って取材して書かれた興味深い本。日本でもいろいろな場所で取材しているが、日本語の聞き取りでミスがあるようだ。本書でたびたびでてくる”nagareba"は「流れ橋」の間違いだと思うが、イラストを見るまで分からなかった。しかし、本書の価値はその意図にある。著者は現代の造林がまっすぐで工業的に扱いやすいが切り株から再生しない針葉樹に偏り、再生を繰り返して事実上永遠に生命を保つ広葉樹の利用が廃れたことを嘆き、その再生に取り組む世界中の人々に会い、生き生きと描いている。このような本がアメリカ人の手によって書かれたということも注目すべきだろう。