Top 40 Peter Wohlleben Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “The trees in a forest care for each other, sometimes even going so far as to nourish the stump of a felled tree for centuries after it was cut down by feeding it sugars and other nutrients, and so keeping it alive. Only some stumps are thus nourished. Perhaps they are the parents of the trees that make up the forest of today.”

— Peter Wohlleben

2. “This is because a tree can be only as strong as the forest that surrounds it.”

— Peter Wohlleben

3. “The forest is really a gigantic carbon dioxide vacuum that constantly filters out and stores this component of the air.”

— Peter Wohlleben

4. “An organism that is too greedy and takes too much without giving anything in return destroys what it needs for life.”

— Peter Wohlleben

5. “Every species want to survive, and each takes from the others what it needs. All are basically ruthless, and the only reason everything doesn’t collapse is because there are safeguards against those who demand more than their due.”

— Peter Wohlleben

6. “So many questions remain unanswered. Perhaps we are poorer for having lost a possible explanation or richer for having gained a mystery. But aren’t both possibilities equally intriguing?”

— Peter Wohlleben

7. “If a tree falls in the forest there are other trees listening.”

— Peter Wohlleben

8. “There are more life forms in a handful of forest soil than there are people on the planet. A mere teaspoonful contains many miles of fungal filaments. All these work the soil, transform it, and make it so valuable for the trees.”

— Peter Wohlleben

9. “Fungi are in between animals and plants. Their cell walls are made of chitin – a substance never found in plants – which makes them more like insects. In addition, they cannot photosynthesize and depend on organic connections with other living beings they can feed on.”

— Peter Wohlleben

10. “One of the oldest trees on Earth, a spruce in Sweden, is more than 9,500 years old. That’s 115 times longer than the average human lifetime.”

— Peter Wohlleben

11. “Trees, it turns out, have a completely different way of communicating: they use scent.”

— Peter Wohlleben

12. “Every walk in the forest is like taking a shower in oxygen.”

— Peter Wohlleben

13. “If we want to use forests as a weapon in the fight against climate change, then we must allow them to grow old, which is exactly what large conservation groups are asking us to do.”

— Peter Wohlleben

14. “There are more life forms in a handful of forest soil than there are people on the planet.”

— Peter Wohlleben

15. “We have learned that mother trees recognize and talk with their kin, shaping future generations. In addition, injured trees pass their legacies on to their neighbors, affecting gene regulation, defense chemistry, and resilience in the forest community.”

— Peter Wohlleben

16. “When they are choosing their trees, deer go for whatever is unusual. Whether they choose spruce, beech, pine, or oak, they will always choose whatever is uncommon locally. Who knows? Perhaps the smell of the shredded bark acts like an exotic perfume. It’s the same with people: it’s the rare things that are most highly prized.”

— Peter Wohlleben

17. “It seems the trees can count! They wait until a certain number of warm days have passed, and only then do they trust that all is well and classify the warm phase as spring. But warm days alone do not mean spring has arrived.”

— Peter Wohlleben

18. “Perhaps we are poorer for having lost a possible explanation or richer for having gained a mystery.”

— Peter Wohlleben

19. “The real question is whether we help ourselves only to what we need from the forest ecosystem, and – analogous to our treatment of animals – whether we spare the trees unnecessary suffering when we do this. T.”

— Peter Wohlleben

20. “Nevertheless, I have learned from this just how powerful a community of trees can be. “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.” Trees could have come up with this old craftsperson’s saying. And because they know this intuitively, they do not hesitate to help each other out.”

— Peter Wohlleben

21. “But isn’t that how evolution works? you ask. The survival of the fittest? Trees would just shake their heads – or rather their crowns. Their well-being depends on their community, and when the supposedly feeble trees disappear, the others lose as well.”

— Peter Wohlleben

22. “When you know that trees experience pain and have memories and that tree parents live together with their children, then you can no longer just chop them down and disrupt their lives with larger machines.”

— Peter Wohlleben

23. “So, in the case of trees, being old doesn’t mean being weak, bowed, and fragile. Quite the opposite, it means being full of energy and highly productive. This means elders are markedly more productive than young whippersnappers, and when it comes to climate change, they are important allies for human beings.”

— Peter Wohlleben

24. “But together, many trees create an ecosystem that moderates extremes of heat and cold, stores a great deal of water, and generates a great deal of humidity. And in this protected environment, trees can live to be very old.”

— Peter Wohlleben

25. “Perhaps the saddest plants of all are those we have enslaved in our agricultural systems. They seem to have lost the ability to communicate, and, as Wohlle-ben says, are isolated by their silence. “Perhaps farmers can learn from the forests and breed a little more wildness back into their grain and potatoes,” he advocates, “so that they’ll be more talkative in the future.”

— Peter Wohlleben

26. “It seems trees need their rest just as much as we do, and sleep deprivation is as detrimental to trees as it is to us.”

— Peter Wohlleben

27. “The wolves turned out to be better stewards of the land than people, creating conditions that allowed the trees to grow and exert their influence on the landscape.”

— Peter Wohlleben

28. “Occasionally, a tree is harvested with care and removed using horses. And so that old trees can fulfill their destinies, 5 to 10 percent of the area is completely protected. Lumber from forests with such species-appropriate tree management can be used with no qualms of conscience. Unfortunately, 95 percent of the current forest practice in Central Europe looks quite different, with the use of heavy machinery and plantation monocultures.”

— Peter Wohlleben

29. “Unfortunately, when the roots are pruned, the brain-like structures are cut off along with the sensitive tips. Ouch! After that, it is as if this interference makes the trees lose their sense of direction underground.”

— Peter Wohlleben

30. “The researchers looked at about 700,000 trees on every continent around the world. The surprising result: the older the tree, the more quickly it grows.”

— Peter Wohlleben

31. “Do you know what the most fun moments are? When recent graduates visit us as part of their training. They were taught exactly what the industry wants. They expect a bunch of long haired dreamers who say ‘peace’. But on the first evening with them we start with calculating the profits of their models and compare it to our model. Then they realize that what they learned at school is nothing compared to what there is to know.”

— Peter Wohlleben

32. “In Ordnung, ein Labyrinth zu knacken, ohne ein Gehirn zu haben, das ist schon eine Leistung.”

— Peter Wohlleben

33. “Wherever there is suddenly more light, flowering plants also try their luck, including honeysuckle. Using its tendrils, it makes its way up around the little trunks, always twining in a clockwise direction. By coiling itself around the trunk, it can keep up with the growth of the young tree and its flowers can bask in the sun. However, as the years progress, the coiling vine cuts into the expanding bark and slowly strangles the little tree.”

— Peter Wohlleben

34. “It appears that nutrient exchange and helping neighbors in times of need is the rule, and this leads to the conclusion that forests are superorganisms with interconnections much like ant colonies.”

— Peter Wohlleben

35. “Willows produce the defensive compound salicylic acid, which works in much the same way. But not on us. Salicylic acid, is a precursor of aspirin, and tea made from willow bark can relieve headaches and bring down fevers. Such defense mechanisms, of course, take time.”

— Peter Wohlleben

36. “Perhaps farmers can learn from the forests and breed a little more wildness back into their grain and potatoes so that they’ll be more talkative in the future.”

— Peter Wohlleben

37. “In a forest that has been left to its own devices, the genetic makeup of each individual tree belonging to the same species is very different. This is in contrast to people, who are genetically very similar. In evolutionary terms, you could say we are all related. In contrast, the individual beeches growing in a stand near where I live are as far apart genetically as different species of animals.”

— Peter Wohlleben

38. “When you measure water pressure in trees, you find it is highest shortly before the leaves open up in the spring. At this time of year, water shoots up the trunk with such force that if you place a stethoscope against the tree, you can actually hear it.”

— Peter Wohlleben

39. “Trees could solve the problems if people trying to improve things would only allow them to takeover.”

— Peter Wohlleben

40. “Coniferous forests noticeably reduce the number of germs in the air, which feels particularly good to people who suffer from allergies.”

— Peter Wohlleben

41. “There is a scientific observation that speaks to this: the blood pressure of forest visitors rises when they are under conifers, whereas it calms down and falls in stands of oaks.”

— Peter Wohlleben

42. “Slow down, breathe deep, and look around. What can you hear? What do you see? How do you feel?”

— Peter Wohlleben

43. “The artificial world of the city offers all kinds of stimuli for which we were not originally designed.”

— Peter Wohlleben

44. “I, for one, welcome breaking down the moral barriers between animals and plants. When the capabilities of vegetative beings become known, and their emotional lives and needs are recognized, then the way we treat plants will gradually change, as well. Forests are not first and foremost lumber factories and warehouses for raw material, and only secondarily complex habitats for thousands of species, which is the way modern forestry currently treats them. Completely the opposite, in fact.”

— Peter Wohlleben

45. “Every tree, therefore, is valuable to the community and worth keeping around for as long as possible. And that is why even sick individuals are supported and nourished until they recover.”

— Peter Wohlleben