Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest by Suzanne Simard

Description: Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the worlds leading forest ecologist who forever changed how people view trees and their connections to one another and to other living things in the forest—a moving, deeply personal journey of discovery"Finding the Mother Tree reminds us that the world is a web of stories, connecting us to one another. [The book] carries the stories of trees, fungi, soil and bears--and of a human being listening in on the conversation. The interplay of personal narrative, scientific insights and the amazing revelations about the life of the forest make a compelling story."—Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding SweetgrassSuzanne Simard is a pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence; her TED talks have been viewed by more than 10 million people worldwide.In this, her first book, now available in paperback, Simard brings us into her world, the intimate world of the trees, in which she brilliantly illuminates the fascinating and vital truths--that trees are not simply the source of timber or pulp, but are a complicated, interdependent circle of life; that forests are social, cooperative creatures connected through underground networks by which trees communicate their vitality and vulnerabilities with communal lives not that different from our own. Simard writes--in inspiring, illuminating, and accessible ways—how trees, living side by side for hundreds of years, have evolved, how they learn and adapt their behaviors, recognize neighbors, compete and cooperate with one another with sophistication, characteristics ascribed to human intelligence, traits that are the essence of civil societies--and at the center of it all, the Mother Trees: the mysterious, powerful forces that connect and sustain the others that surround them. And Simard writes of her own life, born and raised into a logging world in the rainforests of British Columbia, of her days as a child spent cataloging the trees from the forest and how she came to love and respect them. And as she writes of her scientific quest, she writes of her own journey, making us understand how deeply human scientific inquiry exists beyond data and technology, that it is about understanding who we are and our place in the world. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Author Biography SUZANNE SIMARD was born in the Monashee Mountains of British Columbia and was educated at the University of British Columbia and Oregon State University. She is Professor of Forest Ecology in the University of British Columbias Faculty of Forestry. Review One of the Wall Street Journals Ten Best Books of the Year • One of the Best Books of the Year: TIME, The Washington Post "Vivid and inspiring . . . For Simard, personal experience leads to revelation, and scientific revelation leads to personal insight . . . Finding the Mother Tree helps make sense of a forest of mysteries. It might even persuade you that organisms other than ourselves—even fungi—have agency."—Eugenia Bone, The Wall Street Journal "Simard creates her own complex network in this memoir, by weaving the story of [her] discoveries with vignettes from her past. The themes of her research—cooperation, the legacies that one generation leaves for the next, the ways in which organisms react to and recover from stress and disease—are also themes in her own life. The network of friends, family and colleagues who support Simard, as a scientist and as a woman, is visible throughout . . . It feels like a privilege to be let into her life."—Emma Marris, Nature "Simards memoir describes the intersecting webs of her career and private life that brought her to rewrite not only the forestry canon but our understanding of nature itself. She is an intellectual force whose powerful ideas overshadow her name . . . Like Charles Darwins findings, Simards results are so revolutionary and controversial that they have quickly worked their way into social theory, urban planning, culture and art. Simards work knocked 19th-century notions of inevitable competition off their pedestals. If a forest is a commons where the fate of the weakest is tied to that of the strongest, then we have a lot of rethinking to do."—The Washington Post"Simard has spent decades with her hands in the soil, designing experiments and piecing together the remarkable mysteries of forest ecology . . . elegantly detailed . . . deeply personal . . . A testament to Simards skill as a science communicator. Her research is clearly defined, the steps of her experiments articulated, her astonishing results explained and the implications laid bare: We ignore the complexity of forests at our peril."—The New York Times"[Simard] shares the wisdom of a life of listening to the forest . . . a scientific memoir as gripping as any HBO drama series."—The Observer"Finding the Mother Tree reminds us that the world is a web of stories, connecting us to one another. Her vivid manuscript carries the stories of trees, fungi, soil and bears--and of a human being listening in on the conversation. The interplay of personal narrative, scientific insights and the amazing revelations about the life of the forest make a compelling story. Dr. Simards journey as a scientist embodies the power of curiosity coupled to commitment to listen to the natural world and the courage to share what she has learned, against the resistance of scientific establishment. I have great admiration for her science and her storytelling alike. These are stories that the world needs to hear."—Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass"It completely overturned my view of nature."--Kristin Ohlson, New York Times bestselling author"I can think of no one better suited to bring humanity into the process of science."--J. C. Cahill, professor of plant ecology at the University of Alberta"What Simard is revealing here has implications and potential on the scale of mapping the human genome. Simard is one of this planets most insightful and eloquent translators."--John Vaillant, bestselling author of The Tiger, Jaguars Children, and The Golden Spruce"The stories Simard tells, and the insights she draws from them, will inspire readers and change the way they think about the world around them."--Catherine Gehring, professor of biology at Northern Arizona University"This book will have profound implications for our human relationships with the natural world. The insights presented by Dr. Simard point toward a complete paradigm shift in the ways we humans interact with forests, trees, and other species."--Nancy Jean Turner, professor of ethnobotany at the University of Victoria, author of The Earths Blanket"Galvanizing . . . As Simard elucidates her revolutionary experiments, replete withgorgeous descriptions and moments of fear and wonder, a vision of the forest as an intelligent, perceptive and responsive, comes into focus . . . A masterwork of planetary significance." —Booklist (starred review) "Simard artfully blends science with memoir in her eye-opening debut on the startling secrets of trees . . . As moving as it is educational, this groundbreaking work entrances."—Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Simard tells the fascinating story that led Richard Powers to base a character on her in his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Overstory . . . intimate . . . absorbing . . . engaging . . . the science is solid, and the authors overarching theme of stewardship is clear, understandable, and necessary."—Kirkus Review Quote One of the Wall Street Journal s Ten Best Books of the Year * One of the Best Books of the Year: TIME, The Washington Post "Vivid and inspiring . . . For Simard, personal experience leads to revelation, and scientific revelation leads to personal insight . . . Finding the Mother Tree helps make sense of a forest of mysteries. It might even persuade you that organisms other than ourselves--even fungi--have agency."--Eugenia Bone, The Wall Street Journal "Simard creates her own complex network in this memoir, by weaving the story of [her] discoveries with vignettes from her past. The themes of her research--cooperation, the legacies that one generation leaves for the next, the ways in which organisms react to and recover from stress and disease--are also themes in her own life. The network of friends, family and colleagues who support Simard, as a scientist and as a woman, is visible throughout . . . It feels like a privilege to be let into her life."--Emma Marris, Nature "Simards memoir describes the intersecting webs of her career and private life that brought her to rewrite not only the forestry canon but our understanding of nature itself. She is an intellectual force whose powerful ideas overshadow her name . . . Like Charles Darwins findings, Simards results are so revolutionary and controversial that they have quickly worked their way into social theory, urban planning, culture and art. Simards work knocked 19th-century notions of inevitable competition off their pedestals. If a forest is a commons where the fate of the weakest is tied to that of the strongest, then we have a lot of rethinking to do."-- The Washington Post "Simard has spent decades with her hands in the soil, designing experiments and piecing together the remarkable mysteries of forest ecology . . . elegantly detailed . . . deeply personal . . . A testament to Simards skill as a science communicator. Her research is clearly defined, the steps of her experiments articulated, her astonishing results explained and the implications laid bare: We ignore the complexity of forests at our peril."-- The New York Times "[Simard] shares the wisdom of a life of listening to the forest . . . a scientific memoir as gripping as any HBO drama series."-- The Observer "Galvanizing . . . As Simard elucidates her revolutionary experiments, replete with gorgeous descriptions and moments of fear and wonder, a vision of the forest as an intelligent, perceptive and responsive, comes into focus . . . A masterwork of planetary significance." -- Booklist (starred review) "Simard artfully blends science with memoir in her eye-opening debut on the startling secrets of trees . . . As moving as it is educational, this groundbreaking work entrances."-- Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Simard tells the fascinating story that led Richard Powers to base a character on her in his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Overstory . . . intimate . . . absorbing . . . engaging . . . the science is solid, and the authors overarching theme of stewardship is clear, understandable, and necessary."-- Kirkus " Finding the Mother Tree reminds us that the world is a web of stories, connecting us to one another. Her vivid manuscript carries the stories of trees, fungi, soil and bears--and of a human being listening in on the conversation. The interplay of personal narrative, scientific insights and the amazing revelations about the life of the forest make a compelling story. Dr. Simards journey as a scientist embodies the power of curiosity coupled to commitment to listen to the natural world and the courage to share what she has learned, against the resistance of scientific establishment. I have great admiration for her science and her storytelling alike. These are stories that the world needs to hear."--Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass "It completely overturned my view of nature."--Kristin Ohlson, New York Times bestselling author "I can think of no one better suited to bring humanity into the process of science."--J. C. Cahill, professor of plant ecology at the University of Alberta "What Simard is revealing here has implications and potential on the scale of mapping the human genome. Simard is one of this planets most insightful and eloquent translators."--John Vaillant, bestselling author of The Tiger, Jaguars Children, and The Golden Spruce "The stories Simard tells, and the insights she draws from them, will inspire readers and change the way they think about the world around them."--Catherine Gehring, professor of biology at Northern Arizona University "This book will have profound implications for our human relationships with the natural world. The insights presented by Dr. Simard point toward a complete paradigm shift in the ways we humans interact with forests, trees, and other species."--Nancy Jean Turner, professor of ethnobotany at the University of Victoria, author of The Earths Blanket Excerpt from Book 1 Ghosts in the Forest I was alone in grizzly country, freezing in the June snow. Twenty years old and green, I was working a seasonal job for a logging company in the rugged Lillooet Mountain Range of western Canada. The forest was shadowed and deathly quiet. And from where I stood, full of ghosts. One was floating straight toward me. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound emerged. My heart lodged in my throat as I tried to summon my rationality--and then I laughed. The ghost was just heavy fog rolling through, its tendrils encircling the tree trunks. No apparitions, only the solid timbers of my industry. The trees were just trees. And yet Canadian forests always felt haunted to me, especially by my ancestors, the ones whod defended the land or conquered it, who came to cut, burn, and farm the trees. It seems the forest always remembers. Even when wed like it to forget our transgressions. It was midafternoon already. Mist crept through the clusters of subalpine firs, coating them with a sheen. Light-refracting droplets held entire worlds. Branches burst with emerald new growth over a fleece of jade needles. Such a marvel, the tenacity of the buds to surge with life every spring, to greet the lengthening days and warming weather with exuberance, no matter what hardships were brought by winter. Buds encoded to unfold with primordial leaves in tune with the fairness of previous summers. I touched some feathery needles, comforted by their softness. Their stomata--the tiny holes that draw in carbon dioxide to join with water to make sugar and pure oxygen--pumped fresh air for me to gulp. Nestled against the towering, hardworking elders were teenaged saplings, and leaning into them were even younger seedlings, all huddling as families do in the cold. The spires of the wrinkled old firs stretched skyward, sheltering the rest. The way my mother and father, grandmothers and grandfathers protected me. Goodness knows, Id needed as much care as a seedling, given that I was always getting into trouble. When I was twelve, Id crawled along a sweeper tree leaning over the Shuswap River to see how far out I could go. I tried to retreat but slipped and fell into the current. Grampa Henry jumped into his hand-built riverboat and grabbed my shirt collar right before I would have disappeared into the rapids. Snow lay deeper than a grave nine months of the year here in the mountains. The trees far outmatched me, their DNA forged so theyd thrive despite the extremes of an inland climate that would chew me up and spit me out. I tapped a limb of an elder to show gratitude for its hovering over vulnerable offspring and nestled a fallen cone in the crook of a branch. I pulled my hat over my ears while stepping off the logging road and waded deeper into the forest through the snow. Despite it being only a few hours before darkness, I paused at a log, a casualty of saws that had cleared the road right-of-way. The pale round face of its cut end showed age rings as fine as eyelashes. The blond-colored earlywood, the spring cells plump with water, were edged by dark-brown cells of latewood formed in August when the sun is high and drought settles in. I counted the rings, marking each decade with a pencil--the tree was a couple hundred years old. Over twice the number of years my own family had lived in these forests. How had the trees weathered the changing cycles of growth and dormancy, and how did this compare to the joys and hardships my family had endured in a fraction of the time? Some rings were wider, having grown plenty in rainy years, or perhaps in sunny years after a neighboring tree blew over, and others were almost too narrow to see, having grown slowly during a drought, a cold summer, or some other stress. These trees persisted through climatic upheavals, suffocating competition, and ravaging fire, insect, or wind disruptions, far eclipsing the colonialism, world wars, and the dozen or so prime ministers my family had lived through. They were ancestors to my ancestors. A chattering squirrel ran along the log, warning me away from his cache of seeds at the base of the stump. I was the first woman to work for the logging company, an outfit that was part of a rough, dangerous business starting to open its doors to the occasional female student. The first day on the job, a few weeks back, Id visited a clear-cut--a complete felling of trees in a thirty-hectare patch--with my boss, Ted, to check that some new seedlings had been planted according to government rules. He knew how a tree should and should not be planted, and his low-key approach kept workers going through their exhaustion. Ted had been patient with my embarrassment at not knowing a J-root from a deep plug, but Id watched and listened. Soon enough, I was entrusted with the job of assessing established plantations--seedlings put in to replace harvested trees. I wasnt about to screw up. Todays plantation awaited me beyond this old forest. The company had chopped down a large parcel of velvety old subalpine firs and planted prickly needled spruce seedlings this last spring. My task was to check the progress of those new growths. I hadnt been able to take the logging road into the clear-cut because it had been washed out--a gift, since I could detour past these mist-wrapped beauties, but I stopped at a massive pile of fresh grizzly scat. Fog still draped the trees, and I could have sworn something was sliding along in the distance. I looked harder. It was the pale green trusses of the lichen called old mans beard because of the way it sways from branches. Old lichen that particularly thrived on old trees. I plunged the button on my air horn to warn off the specter of bears. Id inherited my fear of them from my mother, who was a child when her grandfather, my great-grampa Charles Ferguson, shot and killed one that was inches from mauling her on the porch. Great-Grampa Charles was a turn-of-the-twentieth-century pioneer in Edgewood, an outpost in the Inonoaklin Valley along the Arrow Lakes of the Columbia basin in British Columbia. With axes and horses, he and his wife, Ellen, cleared the Sinixt Nation land they had homesteaded to grow hay and tend cattle. Charles was known to wrestle with bears and shoot wolves that tried to kill his chickens. He and Ellen raised three children: Ivis, Gerald, and my grandmother Winnie. I crawled over logs covered with moss and mushrooms, inhaling the evergreen mist. One had a river of tiny Mycena mushrooms flowing along the cracks down its length before fanning along a splay of tree roots that dwindled to rotten spindles. Id been puzzling over what roots and fungi had to do with the health of forests--the harmony of things large and small, including concealed and overlooked elements. My fascination with tree roots had started from my growing up amazed at the irrepressible power of the cottonwoods and willows my parents had planted in our backyard when their massive roots cracked the foundation of our basement, tilted over the doghouse, and heaved up our sidewalk. Mum and Dad fell into worried discussions of what to do with the problem theyd unwittingly created in our little plot of land in trying to reconstruct the feel of trees surrounding their own childhood homes. Id watched in awe each spring as a multitude of germinants emerged from cottony seeds amid halos of mushrooms fanning around the base of the trees, and Id become horrified, at eleven, when the city ran a pipeline spewing foamy water into the river beside my house, where the effluent killed the cottonwoods along the shore. First the tops of the crowns thinned, then black cankers appeared around the furrowed trunks, and by the next spring the great trees were dead. No new germinants got established among the yellow outflow. I wrote to the mayor, and my letter went unanswered. I picked one of the tiny mushrooms. The bell-shaped elf caps of the Mycena were dark brown at the apex and faded into translucent yellow at the margins, revealing gills underneath and a fragile stem. The stipes--stems--were rooted in the furrows of the bark, helping the log decay. These mushrooms were so delicate it seemed impossible they could decompose a whole log. But I knew they could. Those dead cottonwoods along the riverbank in my childhood had fallen and sprouted mushrooms along their thin, cracking skin. Within a few years, the spongy fibers of decayed wood had completely disappeared into the ground. These fungi had evolved a way to break down wood by exuding acids and enzymes and using their cells to absorb the woods energy and nutrients. I launched off the log, landed with my caulk spikes in the duff, and grabbed clumps of fir saplings to leverage myself up the slope. The saplings had found a spot to capture a balance between the light of the sun and the wetness of the snowmelt. A Suillus mushroom--tucked near a seedling that had established a few years back--was wearing a scaly brown pancake cap over a yellow porous underbelly and a fleshy stem that disappeared into the ground. In a burst of rain, the mushroom had sprung out of the dense network of branching fungal threads running deep through the forest floor. Like a strawberry fruiting from its vast, intricate system of roots and runners. With a boost of energy from the earthen threads, the fungal cap had unfurled like an umbrella, leaving traces of a lacy veil hugging the brown-spotted stem about halfway up. I picked the mushroom, this fruit of the fungus that otherwise lived mainly belowground. The caps underside was like a sundial of radiating pores. Each oval-shaped opening housed minuscule stalks built to discharge spores like sparks from a firecracker. Spores are the "seeds" of fungi, full of DNA Details ISBN052556599X Author Suzanne Simard Short Title Finding the Mother Tree Pages 384 Language English Year 2022 ISBN-10 052556599X ISBN-13 9780525565994 Format Paperback Publication Date 2022-06-21 Subtitle Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest Publisher Random House USA Inc Imprint Vintage Books Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States Illustrations 31 IN TEXT; 16 PP B&W AU Release Date 2022-06-21 NZ Release Date 2022-06-21 US Release Date 2022-06-21 UK Release Date 2022-06-21 DEWEY B Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:135446420;

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