Finding The Mother Tree
By Suzanne Simard
This book is a PhD Thesis
softened with a life story. Suzanne
Simard’s life story in British Colombia, Canada. The PhD aspect dominates as a “Woman in
Science” and first takes on Canadian Forest Service policy makers with new science
the goes against forest policy that promotes clear cutting large swaths of
forest to a.) produce a profitable lumber industry, b.) creates a long-term sustainable
forest. I am suspect that the book is a
paradigm shifter to the casual hiker with limited, if any, knowledge of forest
management, who have been listening to the government policy makers as opposed
to academia. While Simard has produced
many papers on the subject of forest management, this book as the loudest voice
directed at the general public that I am aware of.
In the book right from the start,
the reader is pelted with new scientific terms.
They keep coming at you and eventually they sink in and make sense. When that happens, you are equally enthused
as the author. You are rooting for the
forest as it takes on a parallel reality as our own human society. We are all connected. Trees-to trees, humans-to-humans, tree-to-human. She starts with arbuscular mycorrhizal networks
in the fungus on the forest floor, where trees communicate with each other much
the same way the 2026 human society communicates. As these parallel sinks in the reader will be
motivated for a hike in the woods to have an intimate experience with the
nature of a forest in a whole new light.
Suzanne's closing thought: Diversity matters. And everything in the universe is connected – between the forest and the prairies, the land and the water, the sky and the soil, the spirits and the living, the people and all other creatures. As you are walking in the woods, give that some thought. Share your thinking here.
Notes:
1. Page
5: When Mother Trees – majestic hubs at the center of the forest communication,
protection, and sentience – die, they pass their wisdom to the kin, generation
after generation, sharing knowledge…
2. Page
18: Branching fungal threads…might be beneficial
hyphae (the long filamentous branches found in fungi and actinobacteria (shown
below), meandering through the soil to pick up nutrients to deliver to the
seedlings in exchange for energy.
3. Page
58: The fungus was growing on the roots
of this healthy tree. Not only that, it
had sprouted a belowground mushroom, a truffle.
The relationship between the tree and the fungus was so robust that the
fungus had borne fruit.
…Since the roots
would be accessing, or anything soluble in water for that matter, such as
nutrients, would have to filter through the fungus, which looked as if it had all
the tools to act as the joiner between the roots and the soils water. Out of the fungus flowed a whole underground
apparatus – truffles, cords, and strands that in turn grew fans of ultrafine
hyphae that infiltrated the soil pores
4. Page
59: mycorrhizal fungus formed a
relationship – life-or-death liaison with a plant. Without entering into this partnership,
neither the fungus nor the plant would survive.
5. Page
80: The roots of the lichens – the
rhizines ( multicellular root-like structures
arising mainly from the lower surface) – excluded enzymes to break down a rock,
while the lichen’s bodies contributed organic material, and together they made
humus for plants to root and grow.
6. Page
100: Then I made a promise. A promise to learn how tree sense and signal
other plants, insects and fungi…To get the word out.
7. Page
102: Even more interesting to me was whether native shrubs might actually
collaborate with the pines to help connect with the soil and create a health
community.
8. Page
117: It was clear that pines get
nitrogen from the soil after it’s been enriched by nitrogen fixing plants like
alder. The pin roots -or mycorrhizal fungi
colonizing their roots – then take the nitrogen up from the soil.
9. Page
120: As they ate the leaves 90 million
critters, living in each teaspoon of soil.
As they ate the leaves, they made small and smaller bits of liter. As they consumed the litter, and one another,
they excreted excess nitrogen into the soil pores making a nutritious soup of
nitrogen compounds accessible to the pine roots.
10. Page
121: Pine got nitrogen from alder not
through the soil as all but thanks to the mycorrhizal fungi.
11. Page
123: And they failed to illuminate the
bigger picture: that interconnections over resources isn’t a winner-take-all
thing: its about give-and-take, building more from a little and finding balance
over the long term.
12. Page
124: We stopped at a crossroad, and I
asked what the companies might do if science got in the way of making money.
13. Page
142: I wanted to know whether these
birches were simply competitors – reducing the resources Douglas fir needed for
survival and growth – or weather they were also collaborators.
14. Page
143: And if birch did spread this bounty
– large amount of sugar it was able to produce in full light – maybe it was
delivered to the shaded Douglas fir through belowground pathway, mycorrhizal
fungi linking the two species together.
15. Page
146: Because of their ability to photo synthesize,
the leaves were the source of chemical energy, the engines of life.
16. Page
147: Even more far-fetched was the idea
that networks might serve as avenues for collaboration and trade routes for
sugar.
17. Page
165: evidence shows unequivocally that
considerable amounts of carbon – energy the currency of all ecosystems – can flow
through the hyphae of shared fungal symbionts from tree to tree, indeed, from
species to species.
18. Page
171: Birch was not being run dry by
transmitting some of its carbon, it was giving enough to boost the survival and
growth of the fir without the cost of its own vigor.
19. Page
178: Where they weren’t planted in rows,
each isolated from the next, but mixed so they could communicate. Care for one
another. I followed the “three sister” technique
developed by Native Americans, who grow corn, squash, and beans as companions
to enhance growth of them all.
20. Page
198: Over estimating yjr threat of a few
birch neighbors could bring unexpected consequences, potentially setting the
forest up for vulnerable future, where lower biodiversity might reduce
productivity, increase the risk of poor health, and augment the spread of
forest fire.
21. Page
202: I went on to explain that, in most years
in Canada, more carbon is lost to wildfire than from burning fossil fuels, and
we should be trying to reduce the risk by planning for missed landscapes of
mixed forests instead of coniferous forests…
22. Page
207: The old growth in this arid
landscape seemed to be aiding the establishment of new seedlings, but maybe the
mycorrhizal network played a role too, serving as a pipeline for the carbon.
23. Page
217: Dan and I received a grant to
create a map of the belowground labyrinth in an old growth forest. The questions posed were; What is the architecture
of this network? Did the pattern help explain
the intelligence of nature.
24. Page
219: Where perhaps the success of
seedlings depended on tapping into mycelia that were flush with water raised by
tap roots of old trees from the deep granite fissures.
25. Page
221: One tree bound to the next, and we
figured the whole forest was connected – by Rhizopogon alone.
26. Page
229: In a mycorrhizal network …what
about the existence of the synapse; isn’t that crucial to signaling neighbor trees
if they are healthy or stressed.
27. Page
230: both neural networks and
mycorrhizal networks transmit information molecules across synapses. Molecules move not just through th cross
walls of adjacent plant cells and the end pores of back-to-back fungal cells,
but also across synapses at the apices of different plant roots, or different mycorrhizas.
28. Page
232: The new grant would eventually show
us that the complex mycorrhizal network unraveled into chaos with clear
cutting.
29. Page
233: Without the pull of the Mother
Tree, though, the new forest might never be the same.
30. Page
251: As climate heats up, the forests
will become sick and many trees will die, as was already happening, nut new
species preadapted to the warmer climate should move in to take their place.
31. Page
255: But the infested trees were being clear-cut,
the dead trees being salvaged for the market.
I wondered if, in our eagerness to turn a dollar, we’d cut off the opportunity
for the dying trees to communicate with the new seedlings.
32. Page
269: … the Mother Trees are sending more
carbon to the mycorrhizal fungi of their kin than the other trees.
33. Page
282: I have come full circle to stumble
onto some of the indigenous ideals: Diversity matters. And everything in the universe is connected –
between the forest and the prairies, the land and the water, the sky and the
soil, the spirits and the living, the people and all other creatures.
