A Look Inside Robert LLewellyn and Joan Maloof’s Living Forest

The false turkey tail shelf fungus, left shown, is a pathogen of hardwood trees. It has also been proven effective as an antibacterial for treating staph infections.

Turtles frequently eat wild mushrooms and thus help distribute the microscopic spores inside.

Ferns inhabited planet earth long before flowers even evolved, having evolved 360 million years ago (which makes them over 100 million years older than dinosaurs).

Just as the hairs on a caterpillar can deter predators and insulate from temperature extremes, the microscopic hairs on a fern may do the same.

Large eyes help great horned owls see at night. Meanwhile, the ear-like tufts atop its head are not ears; they are just for show.

Tiny flowers embedded in the central spathe of the jack-in-the-pulpit, left shown, have an odor that attracts the small flies that pollinate them. The roots of an individual plant may live for more than 25 years.

Forest plants and animals respond to various wavelengths of light, including moonlight. No one has yet studied how forest trees respond to moon cycles, but night-flying pollinators like moths are more active on moonlit nights.

Every year fewer and fewer leaves are produced on a trees lowest branches; the different color of each leaf represents a different wavelength of reflected light.

[easyazon_link identifier=”1604697121″ locale=”US” tag=”gardcoll03-20″]Living Forest[/easyazon_link] is available now wherever books are sold.