Witness Tree: The Book

The Witness Tree book and blog project is an intimate look at the human and natural history of a single, 100-year-old red oak tree at the Harvard Forest, led by 2014-2015 Bullard Fellow and award-winning newspaper journalist Lynda Mapes.

Lynda’s book, Witness Tree, was published by Bloomsbury Publishing in 2017 and is now available in paperback via the University of Washington Press.

Lynda also created a rich archive of posts on her Witness Tree Blog, detailing her discoveries as the book unfolded, and bringing readers along in her life as a journalist embedded at the Harvard Forest. 

BT QURU 03 (red oak) foliage. Photo by Lynda Mapes.
BT QURU 03 (red oak) – the subject of the Witness Tree project. Photo by Lynda Mapes.
Witness Tree notes. Photo by Lynda Mapes.
Lynda interviews John O’Keefe as Patrick Welliver (R) from the Knight Program in Science Journalism at MIT films a trailer about her project. Photo by Doug MacDonald.

Watch the Witness Tree film, produced by Patrick Wellever and colleagues at the MIT Knight Science Journalism program: