Diana Beresford-Kroeger

I just read "Advocating an Unusual Role for Trees" about the intriguing and pioneering scientist Diana Beresford-Kroeger (written by Jim Robbins and published on NYTimes.com on August 11, 2008).

I was drawn to this article partly because of my newfound appreciation for trees due to reading Richard Preston's The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring (click here to read all my posts on that book).

Born in Ireland and currently working at the University of Ottawa school of medicine, Beresford-Kroeger is a botanist, agricultural and medical researcher, lecturer, and self-described "renegade scientist" in the fields of classical botany, medical biochemistry, organic chemistry, and nuclear chemistry.

Here's an excerpt from the NYTimes.com article:

She calls herself a renegade scientist, however, because she tries to bring together aboriginal healing, Western medicine and botany to advocate an unusual role for trees.

She favors what she terms a bioplan, reforesting cities and rural areas with trees according to the medicinal, environmental, nutritional, pesticidal and herbicidal properties she claims for them, which she calls ecofunctions.

...

But some of Ms. Beresford-Kroeger’s claims for the health effects of trees reach far outside the mainstream. Although some compounds found in trees do have medicinal properties and are the subject of research and treatment, she jumps beyond the evidence to say they also affect human health in their natural forms. The black walnut, for example, contains limonene, which is found in citrus fruit and elsewhere and has been shown to have anticancer effects in some studies of laboratory animals. Ms. Beresford-Kroeger has suggested, without evidence, that limonene inhaled in aerosol form by humans will help prevent cancer.

Sounds a little crazy, and definitely lacking hard scientific proof, but it could be true! After all, studies have not been done to study the effects on humans due to natural ambient compounds from trees.

And that Miriam Rothschild, an eccentric home-schooled British naturalist whom I greatly admire, "wrote glowingly of Ms. Beresford-Kroeger’s idea of bioplanning and called it 'one answer to 'Silent Spring'' because it uses natural chemicals rather than synthetic ones" makes me even more interested in Beresford-Kroeger work.

Beresford-Kroeger is also the author of several books, all of which I'd like to take a look at:

• A Garden for Life: The Natural Approach to Designing, Planting, and Maintaining a North Temperate Garden
• Arboretum America: A Philosophy of the Forest
• North American Trees: An Ecological Green Guide
  
• North Temperate Gardening: An Ecological Green Guide
  

I will have to see if my local library carries any of these!

The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring by Richard Preston

I enjoyed reading The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring by Richard Preston, which I borrowed from my local library.

This master of the nonfiction narrative started this book out strong weaving the personal stories of these skywalkers (tree climbers) with their unexpected discoveries of tall trees rising more than thirty-five feet above the ground and the miraculous life growing in their canopies but The Wild Trees loses steam by Part 5 Into the Deep Canopy, particularly as Preston turns the book into a call for eco-action.

And reading about sex in trees (see page 199) just doesn't do it for me.

Still, the book was a fascinating look into the ecology of temperate old growth rain forests tree canopies.

Who could have guessed that currants, elderberries, huckleberries, trees, salamanders, and even crustaceans grow on the crowns of coast redwoods?

And the beautiful drawings of trees and forests scattered throughout the book are just spectacular.

Some of the names these scientists have given the trees are fittingly majestic while others are downright silly. Given the eccentric personalities featured in this book, I suppose the variety in the names they chose shouldn't be surprising: Atlas, Dyerville Giant, Cat Scratch Tree, Graywacke, Gray Poison, Thuderbolt, Crossroads, Paradox, Springing Buck, Laura Mahan, Bamboozle, Logjam, Thor, Bushy Toe, Warm Winds, Harriett Weaver, Alice Rhodes, Humboldt / Telperion, New Hope, Gaia, Icarus, Neptune, Screaming Titans, Earendil, Elwing, El Viejo del Norte, Lost Monarch, Flood Line, Mosque, Obsidian, Pig Snout, Pinnacle, Wounded Knee, Tranquility, Cloud Nine, Obelisk, Tosca, Helios, Hyperion, Tenador, Trifecta, Dome Top, Lone Fern, Radford Stovepipe, and Millennium.

While I'd only mildly recommend this book, I do feel it leaves readers with a sense that there is more to the world than we know -- I think we'd all be better off if we felt that more often.

More Library Books

I went to the library today to return a few books and as usual I left with six more.

• The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring by Richard Preston
• The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking by Roger Martin
• If at First You Don't Succeed . . . The Eight Patterns of Highly Effective Entrepreneurs by Brent Bowers
• Founders at Work: Stories of Startup's Early Days by Jessica Livingston
• The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun
• Persuasive Business Proposals: Writing to Win More Customers, Clients, and Contracts by Tom Sant

Yup, after a three month hiatus, I've gotten back into reading business books.

I plan on skimming the last two books -- they seem more like how-to / reference books than like books worth reading for their literary value (click here to read the table of contents for The Art of Project Management and click here to read the table of contents for Persuasive Business Proposals and you'll see what I mean). Though Persuasive Business Proposals does seem like it'll have some practical advice.

The first book, The Wild Trees, is by the author of The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story (click here to read an excerpt of this dramatic true story of an Ebola virus outbreak in a Northern Virginia laboratory), one of my favorite books growing up. The Wild Trees is about the California Redwood Forest (with trees taller than 350 feet and some of them thousands of years old) and the primeval kingdom of plants and animals that only a handful of people have ever seen. Click here to read an excerpt or check out the author's website for more.



As for the remaining middle three, The Opposable Mind was published by the Harvard Business School Press (for what that's worth), the author of If at First You Don't Succeed (click here to read an excerpt) was the New York Times small business editor, and Founders at Work tells the story of startups like Firefox, TiVo, WebTV, Craigslist, Hotmail, Adobe, and others.

Of those, The Opposable Mind seems the most interesting -- with research from psychologists and profiles of several companies that have been successful in utilizing integrative thinking -- including Four Season Hotels, Procter & Gamble, and Red Hat.