GMC Publications' book tells you "everything you ever wanted to know about forests but were afraid to ask".
The embossed cover has the appealing classic air of a book of Victorian myths, and the eclectic information in the book is also timeless.
There are five sections: woods, trees and forests; forest, fauna and fungi; woodland crafts, foraging and folk remedies; and forests in folklore.
The first establishes woods' role in the world, their evolution, life cycles and dendrochronology.
The second is about what lives in woods, a broad mix from fungi to orangutans.
Crafts include making bird boxes and brooms, while the folk sections are where the book branches out into dreamier fields.
Inhaling smoke from a burning pine is a remedy for a stroke apparently. Tree nymphs come in four types, meliae dryads representing ash trees presumably dying back until a cure is found.
We end with the inevitable Hobbit reference, as forests in modern culture must always include hazardous Mirkwood, the classically scary wood. Hopefully, this book demystifies forests, as opposed to Tolkien, who tried to make them mysterious.
