The wisdom of trees

Maybe society should keep old Mother Trees around — instead of cutting most of them down — so they can naturally shed their seed and nurture their own seedlings. Maybe clear-cutting the old, even if they're not well, wasn't such a good idea.

Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree

Part memoir and part science book, Suzanne Simard's Finding the Mother Tree (2021) tells readers how it was learned that trees are actually social creatures.

Born into a forestry family in Canada, Simard's early jobs included "weeding" new forests that had been replanted after clear-cutting. The idea was that other trees, like birch, competed with the trees foresters wanted for future harvesting. This didn't make sense to her, and as she got her education and eventually became a college professor, she completed numerous experiments showing that, in fact, trees don't so much compete as cooperate.

Trees exchange carbon and water, as needed, to benefit each other, she found. Mother Trees, as she calls older trees, nurture younger ones, especially their own kin. Thus, neither clear-cutting nor removing birch or other unwanted trees actually encourages forest growth. Instead, planted trees are likely to grow more slowly or die from disease without older trees nearby to help them along.

Convincing the forestry industry of the truth of her findings proved difficult until other scientists duplicated and supplemented her findings. Eventually this troublemaker became a hero.

Along the way, Simard had an up and down life. She tells about the tragic death of her rodeo cowboy brother, her marriage and divorce, her daughters and the breast cancer that resulted from the Roundup she applied years before to kill those "weeds."