Over

This magnificent beech tree has lost a limb and it didn't take me long to discover why. The parasitic fungus Ganoderma applanatum  (extra) has taken hold and is slowly sucking away its life sap. It will take a while but the structure of the tree is weakened and more branches will drop before the entire tree succumbs.

I've recently finished reading The Overstory by Richard Powers, which several people recommended to me. It's a colossal work, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and widely acclaimed by notable literary voices. Powers writes well and is clearly both passionate and well-informed about trees (although if he doesn't acknowledge his sources.*)  But the human characters, despite several promising  background stories, never came to life for me. The involvement of the main protagonists in environmental activism is an opportunity to explain to the crucial role played  by trees in preserving the health of the planet but the  subsidiary characters could have been omitted altogether. The novel would have benefited from a good edit, I feel,  on the  'less is more' principle. 

Compared to a very early (perhaps the first) eco-novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey, The Overstory lacks wit and verve.  Written in 1975 (!) The Monkey Wrench Gang also features a group of odd balls and misfits who band together, in this case  to sabotage the construction of a massive dam in Utah. Although dated in its language and attitudes, the story zips along without a trace of sermonising. 

*The forestry expert character in The Overstory is based on Susan Simard who was the first to demonstrate how trees communicate with each other. Her TED talk really is worth a listen, she's so engaging and so passionate as well as describing everything very simply.