Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

by Suzanne Simard

elder firs

bottlebrush ...

subalpine fir

minimizing water loss, helping them cope with the drought.

They did this by opening their stomata for only a few hours in the morning when the dew was heavy. In these early hours, trees sucked carbon dioxide in through the open pores to make sugar, and in the process, transpired water brought up from the roots. By noon, they slammed their ...

Enderby and Salmon Arm,

the generous crown of an old Douglas fir,

The brown furrowed bark absorbed the heat and protected the tree from fire.

The orange bark of the ponderosas also protected the parasol-crowned trees from the fires

These seedlings were growing happily where there was barely any water, while my seedlings in the Coast Mountains to the west were dying where there was plenty.

awn of a renegade grass seed head

the saprotrophic oyster mushrooms at Mabel Lake,

the pathogenic honey mushrooms.

Haha

Could the old trees be helping the young ones by passing them water through root grafts?

Grafts were unions where roots of different trees spliced into a single root, with phloem shared in common,

Simile

Haha

Trembling aspen are unique in that many stems of the same individual spring from subterranean buds along a shared network of roots,

Bring him some!

purple silky lupines,

golden heart-leaved arnicas,

rosy pus...

a tortuous ponderosa

Is that a name or metaphorical description? Question

the lichen-crusted soil

The hard clay was matted with tree roots and grass rhizomes—the underground creeping stems with nodes here and there, like...

the mineral clods were chock-full of voluminous white and pink and black ...

Finer than the thick yellow mats in the subalpine-fir forest below the clear-cut earlier in the spring.

P. 17

A pink coral fungus,

the gills, pores, and ridges of the other fungal species

What were the fungal threads of this odd-shaped mushroom doing, and how were they helping the coral fungus make a living?

the prevailing wisdom was that trees only compete with one another to survive.

Logan Lake arena

The unobtrusive mountains,

The cowboys were, in spite of the heat, in full regalia,

Simile

Haha

Simile

Kelly.

this cougar country

where we’d been raised. Where our parents had taught us

Dante’s Inferno.

Chetwynd, Quesnel, and Clinton

Uncle Wayne,

men who would rather die riding their horse across a meadow than in a chair reading a book.

I swallowed my distress.

Uncle Wayne

Uncle Wayne,

the minutiae of the seven seconds.

The medic

Haha - what kind? EMS? M.D.? R.N.? Vet?