Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

by Suzanne Simard

I picked one of the tiny mushrooms. The bell-shaped elf caps of the Mycena were dark brown at the apex and faded into translucent yellow at the margins, revealing gills underneath and a fragile stem. The stipes—stems—were rooted in the furrows of the bark, helping the log decay. These mushrooms were so delicate it seemed impossible they could decompose a whole log. But I knew they could. Those dead cottonwoods along the riverbank in my childhood had fallen and sprouted mushrooms along their thin, cracking skin. Within a few years, the spongy fibers of decayed wood had completely disappeared into the ground. These fungi had evolved a way to break down wood by exuding acids and enzymes and using their cells to absorb the wood’s energy and nutrients.