Suzanne Simard's "Finding the Mother Tree"

Trees use mushrooms to talk with each other and send each other gifts. That's the incredibly ridiculous sounding idea that brought me to 2021's "Finding the Mother Tree" by Suzanne Simard. It's half memoir, half journey through scientific discovery, and it was exactly the right pace for someone who was just taking a step into the behemoth world of plants.

Like many people, the pandemic brought with it a lot of time. Time previously spent on dates, solo-movie trips, and just being out of the house was suddenly available to me. I don't remember now what the inciting incident was, but I put that time into my veranda garden. When I wasn't learning by doing, I was scarfing down every garden-focused YouTube channel and podcast I could find. Epic Gardening, The Joe Gardener Show, Share-Batake : Japanese Farm Life -- the background of baths, drives, everything was suddenly gardening.

It was through this that I learned about mycorrizhal fungal association. If I wanted to be more successful in the garden, I should do things for the benefits of the soil, for the organisms within it. This would lead to healthy soil, I learned, and that would lead to the development of mycorrizhae that would help my plants take up more nutrients from the soil. I knew success was limited as a planter gardener, but I did and do what I can to promote healthy soil ecology. I like to think that the pounds upon pounds of jalapenos and hawk's claw peppers last year were a direct result of this.

I accepted the idea of soil ecosystems easily. It made sense, but the June 16, 2022 episode of the Joe Gardener podcast brought ideas that sounded like high fantasy. Dr. Suzanne Simard, professor of ecology with the University of British Columbia, explained that just as mycorrizhae help gardeners, they serve as an internet of sorts for forests. Trees linked into these networks pay the mycorrizhae networks a connection fee in the form of sugars and in return they gain the ability to send water and nutrients through the system to other trees. What's more, upon examination, these networks tended to be incredibly colorful. Surely, I thought, I'm listening to someone describe the flora of the Avatar movies.

My skepticism wasn't helped by the name of Dr. Simard's book: Finding the Mother Tree. It sounded like some new age work of mysticism, on par with something like Power Stones and You. Looking back on that reaction having read the book, I feel a little silly.

A mother tree, you see, is a thing. The center of their own chunk of forest, they help out other trees, including their children and often trees of other species. They work like giant servers, linking together trees throughout the forest, bringing both individual trees and the greater ecosystem health and stability.

Dr. Simard's book threads the story of her research through the story of how she grew up, became an ignorant forester responsible for the destruction of ecosystems, and then an often doubted scientist saying things about the relationship between trees and mushrooms that people didn't want to hear. She fought the logging industry, the boys club that was her own scientific community, and her own lack of confidence. Often times, battles popped up on all fronts.

It was inspiring to read about all she'd overcome to get the things she knew to be true out into the world. The way she explained those things she'd discovered and how she'd done so was enthralling. I understood the different experiments she was conducting with carbon molecules after one explanation. Explanations of symbiotic relationships between trees and species specific funghi never seemed anything but incredible. You walk away understanding why the logging industry, farmers, and gardeners need to be fully aware of mycorrizhae and biodiversity.

This is a book for people interested in ecology, gardening, and environmentalism. Reading it will give you a greater appreciation for the natural world. On my recent return to the States, I gifted a copy to my brothers just because I felt they needed to put what's inside it into their heads. Readers of this blog will not, sadly, receive the same gift, but I encourage you to seek out your own copy and find out more about just what is up with trees (to say nothing of their fungal friends).

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Next up, Peter Wohlleben's "The Hidden Life of Trees"