Finding the Mother Tree

Finding the Mother Tree is a beautiful memoir written by Suzanne Simard, a forest ecologist. It’s about her life’s work to understand trees as part of an interconnected system, and she masterfully shares her experience and perspective. She takes you on a journey of discovery with stories of trees, fungi, soil and more. It feels a bit like the perfect nonfiction version of the Overstory by Richard Powers, which I also loved.

The book is the interwoven story of a scientist's lifetime research and personal life. Suzanne Simard, who started her work in a logging company, describes her original research as a forrest scientist, who discovers trees as connected life-forms, growing in unison with each other as well as as with fungi and connected by mycorrhizal (mycelic and root) networks forming a symbiotic association between plants and fungi. Trees can comunicate complex messages and they are closely working together. Her findings are highly contested as the Canadian logging industry favors apparently simple solutions of clear-cutting and cash-crop woods. The book manages to… show more.

There are novels based on this book, which are also enthralling. Having been an academic all my life, I was immediately captured by Simard’s daring struggle to tell the truth that goes against the established scientific order. She took me on her own adventure to understand the sociality of trees. I read it during the COVID pandemic when pretty much the only beings I related to were trees in my nearby Botanic Garden.

There was an oak tree I talked to every day, and lying in its shelter, I was protected by it. Later, I came to love an Angophora… show more.

Coastal redwoods and Douglas firs are among the biggest organisms on the planet, yet these and other trees can only reach such spectacular heights thanks to the smallest organisms, the microbes. In fact, nearly all plants have symbiotic fungi that act as surrogate roots to obtain nutrients essential for their growth and survival.

Simard, a Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia, has taken this idea further and gathered evidence showing that unrelated trees exchange not only nutrients but also defense signals and other chemical information via their fungal network. But the real protagonist here is the… show more.

Dr. Suzanne Simard is also a professor of Forest Ecology, but like Robin Wall Kimmerer (above), she has created a readable and personal book about her subject. Her research, undertaken over decades, set out to prove that trees communicate and cooperate and that they help each other, both within a species and between different species.

Her gripping story includes how she overcame a Male Chauvinist work environment and proved that a weed-killed monoculture was far from the most optimal way to manage forests. Her book is a reminder of how little we know of the incredibly complex biosphere we are… show more.

I love how Simard weaves her life story together with the story of what she discovered.

I empathize with her standing up to rejection, even ridicule, to overcome being an “outsider,” both for her discoveries and for being a woman in science. I admire that she is equally attuned to the details of how trees and the fungi beneath them collaborate and communicate as she is to the industrial, societal, and climatological implications.

Through it all, she expresses the message that life is sustained and shaped by a web of interactions within species and among them.

I loved learning of Mother Trees and am constantly reminded of this stunning experiment detailed by Dr. Simard in this book to have groundbreaking moments in science paired with a deeply personal dive into individual self-discovery.

This book left me feeling as if I was a part of something greater than the individual self.

If you love children, I'll bet you love trees, too!

This book made me gasp as I read how smart trees are and how they take care of one another and other living things. In her engaging story, Simard teaches us about trees' ability to adapt to changing conditions, about humans' dependence on a thriving natural environment, and about our perilous future if trees are ruthlessly felled. She says:

"Listen" to trees. Trees "talk" to other plants, especially through roots. Trees have much to teach us about communication and cooperation.

Save trees. Trees are our comforters, just as deforested areas… show more.

This is the woman who first discovered the hidden life and secret language of trees (not Peter Wohlleben who later wrote about this topic too). It was ecologist Suzanne Simard who made the discoveries from a lifetime of study after being raised in the forests of British Columbia.

This book is a dazzling scientific detective story from the ecologist who discovered the symbiotic relationship between the mycorrhizal networks of fungi and tree roots and how trees cooperated, healed each other, and remembered. This is her story and the story of her discoveries of trees wisdom and sentience.

She shares how… show more.

Rare is the scientist who can write nonfiction that captures readers’ imaginations while taking them on a journey packed with amazing discoveries and loads of personalities - humans and trees alike.

This is a most delightful venture - one that grabs your attention and guides you into an unknown world of plant communication and intelligence (Who knew plants could “talk” with each other?). I enjoyed this book because it is as much a story as it is a scientific investigation.

Here is another eye-popping book that will change your thinking and offer compelling science in a format that is both… show more.