Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

by Suzanne Simard

Jean

Mary

Simile

whitebark pines

Mum

Robyn,

Bar...

J...

chicken mole,

The hemlocks didn’t seem the least bit concerned, and I appreciated their calm demeanor. They were built for duty, clinging like mountain goats to rocks, tossing cones like pennies, unafraid of the worst.

Anthropomorphism

Mary

whether the firs were communicating their stresses to the ponderosa pines,

I had two courses to teach. Plus five new graduate students and a postdoc to tend to,

How do mycorrhizal networks affect the regeneration of trees in o...

Squamish River.

Tantalus Range

Yuan Yuan

Y.Y. Song

only those pines connected by a mycorrhizal network to the dying firs, not those whose connections were restricted, were recipients of this inheritance.

Anthropomorphism

“Saint chats!”

If dying trees communicate with incoming species, we might use this knowledge to better assist the migration of tree species as the old forests become maladapted to their native places.

Anthropomorphism

the fall of 2011,

Amanda,

The Douglas-fir Mother Tree

determination to carry on, to care for her young in spite of the shock of her losses.

Metaphor anthropomorphism for forest

the treatment to follow depended on whether the cancer had spread to my lymph nodes.

Mother Trees Connect the Forest

Could Mother Trees distinguish kin from stranger seedlings?

Hannah

Haha hyperbole simile

Jean

Kelly Rose

Nava

Adams Lake,

1993

Twenty-one years later, in July 2014, we could see that the trees cut off from one another were suffering, their immune systems weak, their vitality bridled.

Diversity matters. And everything in the universe is connected—between

Simile

The cracks are in plain view.

Subiyay,

the Secwepemc principal of k̓wseltktnews

the Salish concept of nə́c̓aʔmat ct (“we are one”).

We must heed the answers we’re ...

I believe this kind of transformative thinking is w...

It is a philosophy of treating the world’s creatures, its gifts, as of equal importance to us. This begins by recognizing...

They perceive, relate, and communicate; they exercise ...

sentience, wisdom, int...

By noting how trees, animals, and even fungi—any and all nonhuman species—have this agency, we can acknowledge that they deserve a...

we can regain balance by acknowledging that if we harm one species, one forest, one lake, this ripples through the entire complex web. Mistreatment of one species is mistreatment of all.

Making this transformation requires that humans reconnect with nature—the forests, the prairie, the oceans—instead of treating everything and everyone as objects for exploitation.