The Fields Pond Book Group meets monthly on Thursday nights at 6:30 p.m., in-person at the Orono Public Library and online via Zoom. If you would like to participate, please contact Joyce directly at rumery@maine.edu to sign up for the Zoom link, which she will send out shortly before the meeting.
June 11, 2026
Lewis, Daniel. Twelve Trees: The Deep Roots of Our Future. 2024. 304pp.
The world today is undergoing the most rapid environmental transformation in human history, from climate change to deforestation. Scientists, ethnobotanists, indigenous peoples, and collectives of all kinds are closely studying trees and their biology to understand how and why trees function individually and collectively. Lewis, curator and historian at one of the world’s most renowned research libraries, travels the world to learn about these trees in their habitats. Lewis takes us on a journey to plant breeding labs, botanical gardens, research facilities, deep inside museum collections, to the tops of tall trees, underwater, and around the Earth, journeying into the deserts of the American west and the jungles of Peru, to offer a perspective on the crucial impact trees have on our entire planet. When a once-common tree goes extinct in the wild but survives in a botanical garden, what happens next? How can scientists reconstruct lost genomes and habitats? How does a tree store thousands of gallons of water, or offer up perfectly preserved insects from millions of years ago, or root itself in muddy swamps and remain standing? How does a 5,000-year-old tree manage to live, and what can we learn from it? To study the science of trees is to study not just the present, but the story of the world, its past, and its future.
After the June meeting, the Fields Pond Book Group will take a summer break and resume meeting in September.