Research Catalog

Title

The wild trees : a story of passion and daring / Richard Preston.

Author

Preston, Richard, 1954-

Publication

New York : Random House, c2008.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

294 p. : ill., maps; 20 cm.

Summary

Hidden away in foggy, uncharted rain forest valleys in Northern California are the tallest organisms the world has ever sustained--the coast redwood trees. 96% of the ancient redwood forests have been logged, but the fragments that remain are among the great wonders of nature. The biggest redwoods can rise more than thirty-five stories above the ground, forming cathedral-like structures in the air. Until recently, the canopy at the tops of these majestic trees was undiscovered. Writer Preston unfolds the story of the daring botanists and amateur naturalists that found a lost world above California, dangerous, hauntingly beautiful, and unexplored. The deep redwood canopy is a vertical Eden filled with mosses, lichens, spotted salamanders, hanging gardens of ferns, and thickets of huckleberry bushes, all growing out of massive trunk systems, sometimes hollowed out by fire. Thick layers of soil sitting on limbs harbor animal and plant life unknown to science.--From publisher description.

Subject

• Coast redwood > California, Northern
• Coast redwood > Ecology > California, Northern
• Forest canopies > California, Northern
• Forest conservation > California, Northern
• Tree climbing > California, Northern > Anecdotes

Genre/Form

Anecdotes

Note

• Preview on Richard Preston's new book "Panic in level 4" included.

System Details (note)

• Hidden away in foggy, uncharted rain forest valleys in Northern California are the tallest organisms the world has ever sustained--the coast redwood trees. 96% of the ancient redwood forests have been logged, but the fragments that remain are among the great wonders of nature. The biggest redwoods can rise more than thirty-five stories above the ground, forming cathedral-like structures in the air. Until recently, the canopy at the tops of these majestic trees was undiscovered. Writer Preston unfolds the story of the daring botanists and amateur naturalists that found a lost world above California, dangerous, hauntingly beautiful, and unexplored. The deep redwood canopy is a vertical Eden filled with mosses, lichens, spotted salamanders, hanging gardens of ferns, and thickets of huckleberry bushes, all growing out of massive trunk systems, sometimes hollowed out by fire. Thick layers of soil sitting on limbs harbor animal and plant life unknown to science.--From publisher description.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Vertical Eden -- Fall of Telperion -- Opening of the Labyrinth -- Love in Zeus -- Into the deep canopy -- Glossary -- Acknowledgments.

ISBN

• 0812975596 (pbk.) :
• 9780812975598 (pbk.) :

OCLC

191961282

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library