Teaching the Trees
University of Georgia Press, Athens, Georgia, 2005
Description
In this collection of natural-history essays, biologist Joan Maloof embarks on a series of lively, fact-filled expeditions into forests of the eastern United States. Through Maloof’s engaging, conversational style, each essay offers a lesson in stewardship as it explores the interwoven connections between a tree species and the animals and insects whose lives depend on it—and who, in turn, work to ensure the tree’s survival.
Never really at home in a laboratory, Maloof took to the woods early in her career. Her enthusiasm for firsthand observation in the wild spills over into her writing, whether the subject is the composition of forest air, the eagle’s preference for nesting in loblolly pines, the growth rings of the bald cypress, or the gray squirrel’s fondness for weevil-infested acorns. With a storyteller’s instinct for intriguing particulars, Maloof expands our notions about what a tree is, through her many asides about the six species of leafhoppers that eat only sycamore leaves or the midges that live inside holly berries and somehow prevent them from turning red. As a scientist, Maloof accepts that trees have a spiritual dimension that cannot be quantified. As an unrepentant tree hugger, she finds support in the scientific case for biodiversity. As an activist, she can’t help but wonder how much time is left for our forests.
Juror Notes
As if on a stroll through a forest, the reader encounters full-bleed pages of insect and flower scenes at surprising intervals. The tall, skinny trim size is entirely appropriate, as are the windswept typeface and historically natural palette.
Credits
- Design firm
- University of Georgia Press
- Creative director
- Sandra Strother Hudson
- Art directors
- Christa Frangiamore, Kathi Dailey Morgan
- Designer
- Kathi Dailey Morgan
- Jacket designer
- Erin Kirk New
- Illustrator
- John Abbott
- Production director
- Kathi Dailey Morgan
- Production coordinator
- Kathi Dailey Morgan
- Production artist
- Walton Harris
- Picture editor
- Christa Frangiamore
- Author
- Joan Maloof
- Editors
- Project, Jon Davies; acquistions, Christa Frangiamore
- Trim size
- 5 x 8.5 inches
- Pages
- 176
- Quantity printed
- 1,500
- Compositor
- Walton Harris
- Typeface
- Aldus with Lorrenne display
- Printer/binder
- Thomson-Shore
- Jacket printer
- Pinnacle Press
- Paper
- 55 lb. EcoBook Natural 100PCW
- Binding method
- Notch bound
- Publisher/client
- University of Georgia Press