Finding the Mother Tree
Uncovering the Wisdom and Intelligence of the Forest
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4.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
'A scientific memoir as gripping as any HBO drama series' Kate Kellaway, Observer
A dazzling scientific detective story from the ecologist who first discovered the hidden language of trees
No one has done more to transform our understanding of trees than the world-renowned scientist Suzanne Simard. Now she shares the secrets of a lifetime spent uncovering startling truths about trees: their cooperation, healing capacity, memory, wisdom and sentience.
Raised in the forests of British Columbia, where her family has lived for generations, Professor Simard did not set out to be a scientist. She was working in the forest service when she first discovered how trees communicate underground through an immense web of fungi, at the centre of which lie the Mother Trees: the mysterious, powerful entities that nurture their kin and sustain the forest.
Though her ground-breaking findings were initially dismissed and even ridiculed, they are now firmly supported by the data. As her remarkable journey shows us, science is not a realm apart from ordinary life, but deeply connected with our humanity.
In Finding the Mother Tree, she reveals how the complex cycle of forest life - on which we rely for our existence - offers profound lessons about resilience and kinship, and must be preserved before it's too late.
Customer Reviews
Who knew I’d be interested in forest ecology?
Author
Canadian. Grew up in the forests of her native country as part of a family involved in the logging industry. (Rooted in logging, you might say. I would.) Now Professor of Forest Ecology at University of British Columbia, TED-talker extraordinaire, and pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence. It was thanks to her that James Cameron came up with ‘The Tree of Souls’ for the movie Avatar, for what that’s worth (about $3bn and counting).
Summary
Prof S explains why she’s so into trees, and how they interact and communicate using below-ground fungal networks as described in her multi-million view TED Talk on how trees talk to one another. “If the mycorrhizal network is a facsimile of a neural network, the molecules moving among trees could be as sharp as the electrochemical impulses between neurons, the brain chemistry that allows us to think and communicate.”
She goes on to describe her research (200 published papers so far) that led to the recognition that forests have hub trees, or Mother Trees. These large, highly connected trees that play an important role in the flow of information and resources in a forest. (Am I the only one who sees parallels with Facebook?) She proceeds from there to outline her ongoing research into how these complex relationships contribute to forest resilience, adaptability and recovery from and has far-reaching implications for how to manage and heal forests from human impact including, you guessed it, climate change.
Writing
The author has a reputation for being a gifted science communicator in person and on videotape. Her writing is well paced, technical yet comprehensible to the educated layperson. Her enthusiasm for the subject matter is infectious, although her views about governmental bureaucracy, venal corporate players, and misogynistic fellow scientists verged on polemic occasionally.
Bottom line
Who knew an old white guy would find forest ecology interesting?