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A review by carlyoc
Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest by Suzanne Simard
hopeful
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
A sweeping epic that covers decades of research intertwined with a memoir of personal discovery just the way the roots of the trees Simard studies mix with the mycelium of fungi.
It is a slow burn, and definitely took me a while to get hooked. A little dense, frontloaded with facts about biology and history, it is not as approachable as Braiding Sweetgrass, which it otherwise has a lot of similarities with.
We begin way back with Simard's ancestors engaging in small-scale logging, than Simard's early career in large-scale industrial logging. We follow her through grad school, marriage, early presentations of her work that met with great skepticism. Then raising kids, divorce, surviving breast cancer, finding new love, gaining renown and respect in the scientific world.
We start with the idea that maybe clear cutting trees indiscriminantly is bad, then learn that trees of different species share nutrients with each other rather than existing in a state of pure competition. Then we learn that reaource sharing can go two ways, that mother trees can recognize their kin, that trees can transmit information about dangers and how to survive them, and that even the livelihood of yhe salmon in the rivers affects the surrounding trees. Within the decades encapsulated in this book, our entire understanding of trees has completely transformed. And now we get to see the woman behind many of those discoveries and learn how they transformed her own life too.
It is a slow burn, and definitely took me a while to get hooked. A little dense, frontloaded with facts about biology and history, it is not as approachable as Braiding Sweetgrass, which it otherwise has a lot of similarities with.
We begin way back with Simard's ancestors engaging in small-scale logging, than Simard's early career in large-scale industrial logging. We follow her through grad school, marriage, early presentations of her work that met with great skepticism. Then raising kids, divorce, surviving breast cancer, finding new love, gaining renown and respect in the scientific world.
We start with the idea that maybe clear cutting trees indiscriminantly is bad, then learn that trees of different species share nutrients with each other rather than existing in a state of pure competition. Then we learn that reaource sharing can go two ways, that mother trees can recognize their kin, that trees can transmit information about dangers and how to survive them, and that even the livelihood of yhe salmon in the rivers affects the surrounding trees. Within the decades encapsulated in this book, our entire understanding of trees has completely transformed. And now we get to see the woman behind many of those discoveries and learn how they transformed her own life too.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Cancer