Finding The Mother Tree

Suzanne Simard is the author of Finding The Mother Tree: Discovering The Wisdom of the Forest. This is non-fiction, sometimes technical, but totally readable. She relates growing up in the rainforests in British Columbia. Her grandfather and great grandfather were loggers on the family property. Her family did selective logging. After college she went to work for a logging company that did clear cutting. Her job was to decide how to replant the forest. Some of her plantations failed because the logging company wanted only the most valuable trees to be planted. They were not interested in tree biodiversity. Later she worked for the Canadian government. She went to school in Oregon for her masters degree. She thought there was a link between the fungi on the roots of the tree and the health of the tree. She also thought some trees benefitted from the presence of other trees. She found out that fir trees benefitted from alder growing nearby. Standard practice was to cut the alder near a fir tree and treat it with Round Up. Suzanne got push back on her ideas because of her gender and because she was proving that the standard logging practices were not always the best way to go. In studying for her Ph.D. she did an experiment where she added a radioactive element to the structure of a tree. Then she checked the neighboring tree and found the radioactive element was in that tree too so that meant trees communicated and shared their resources. Mixed in with all the science were stories about her family, her marriage and her two children. I found it interesting to learn that trees can distinguish their genetic offspring from other offspring. There is still a lot we don't know about trees and this book is one of the best environmental nature book that I have read in awhile

.