Finding the Mother Tree
From the world’s 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.
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About the Book
In her first book, 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 complex, 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 perceive one another, learn and adapt their behaviors, recognize neighbors, and remember the past; how they have agency about the future; elicit warnings and mount defenses, 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.
Praise
“This book promises to change our understanding about what is really going on in the forest, and other pressing mysteries about the real world.”
Michael Pollan
New York Times bestselling author
“The interplay of personal narrative, scientific insights, and the amazing revelations about the life of the forest make a compelling story. These are stories that the world needs to hear.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Author of “Braiding Sweetgrass” and professor of environmental and forest biology, State University of New York