For depth psychologist Carl Jung, the tree was a powerful image of the Self and of the soul’s long journey toward wholeness. He noticed that people often included trees in their mandalas and in other spontaneous images they created. To him, this suggested something important: the psyche was trying to gather its many scattered parts into one living whole.

In recent years, scientists and naturalists have begun looking more deeply into the lives of trees. How they grow, communicate, support one another, bear fruit, host countless forms of life, and eventually die. Why this growing fascination with trees?