Finding The Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard, a Book Review! by Alexia Wdowski

 

‘I imagined the flow of energy from the mother trees as powerful as the ocean tide, as strong as the sun’s rays, as irrepressible as the wind in the mountains, as unstoppable as a mother protecting her child.’

Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree.

On a rainy Sunday I took a camera and went to Llandre churchyard near Aberystwyth in search of a 1000 year old yew, possibly one of the oldest trees in West Wales.

I had been reading ‘Finding the Mother Tree’ published in 2021 by Suzanne Simard, a Canadian Forest Ecologist at the University of British Columbia, and wanted to see this lonely yew that had stood through so many years, standing beside these graves.

The book had given me a renewed sense of wonder about these aged trees, what they have seen, and what they can teach us.

Our native common yew can live the longest of all the UK's native tree species with individual trees able to reach an incredible 3,000 years of age.


They are defined as ‘ancient’ from around 900 years meaning the yew at Llandre, one of the many found in churchyards, has been a continuous presence throughout the forming and fading of kingdoms, conquests, attacks and rebellions.

Ancient Yews survived so long partly because they are revered and respected, entwined in both mythology and folklore.

An ancient yew is a living witness to our own history, even the misty parts beyond record; the lost rituals of the druids, the building of the first Christian churches, and the darkness of medieval forgetting. But do these old trees also contain a deeply practical knowledge born of years of experience and is there a way for us to access it?

Finding the Mother Tree

If anyone knows the answer it is Suzanne Simard. Her book, ‘Finding the Mother Tree,’ is the story of a life lived amongst trees, an interconnected mix of memoir, nature writing and science, which mirrors the webs of forest connection she describes. She grew up in a family of foresters in the Monashee Mountains, a wild area which stretches from Southern Canada all the way across the border into the US and has worked as a scientist throughout her adult life. Her main discovery is that deep in the heart of the forest you can find ‘Mother Trees,’ wise old trees in forests, surrounded by seedlings, who share carbon and other nutrients in reciprocal ways using their webs of mycorrhizal fungi. These Mother Trees act as central hubs, communicating with the young seedlings around them. Within a single forest, a Mother Tree can be connected to hundreds of other trees.

Suzanne first noticed yellow spruce seedlings suffering, turning parched and yellow, despite being planted according to the best forestry knowledge at the time. Instead of thriving, these little saplings were withering. When she looked at their stark bare roots and compared them to the roots of trees she had known as a child, which were rich and dripping with a strange yellow fungus, she had a sense that understanding fungus may be key to understanding their lack of health. The yellow strands are called mycorrhizal fungi and she would later become an expert in categorizing and discovering the secrets of this furry tree companion, eventually being able to answer her own question through her research into the interconnectivity of Mother Trees.

‘The properties of an eco-system breathe with health, productivity, beauty, spirit. Clean air, clean water, fertile soil. The forest is wired for healing in this way and we can help if we follow her lead.’

Suzanne Simard

Suzanne sees trees as equals, as wise, deserving of reverence and respect, she also sees them, not just as individuals but as social creatures, organised into mutually dependent societies. These trees understand a very humble truth that the health of the whole forest, or society, is important for the growth and survival of their own offspring.

Suzanne suggests we can work with the forest rather than against it. It knows what it is doing, we just need to help it on its way. If we keep elder trees around that survived changes to climate in the past, they can share their resilience with both younger trees and younger scientists. This is even more important when forests are under stress from drought, pests or disease. Keeping communities of trees intact helps them resist stress and recover faster, meaning that connected forests are more likely to be here with us for many generations.

Her work is rooted in forestry and she has paid her dues as a scientist. The work is sometimes dangerous and always dirty, including hiding from bears, getting stranded in snow and using radioactive isotopes. During her first experiments she had to spray the toxic chemical Roundup over healthy plants and trees in order to have firm evidence of its long-term damage. Forestry experts believed spraying helped trees grow in the short term by clearing ‘weeds’ out the way. Suzanne proved that over the long-term the trees would weaken. As well as the research, the other story here of how scientific information is funded, gathered, reviewed and eventually believed (or not) is just as interesting as the results themselves.

Suzanne Simard marries her science with her intuition, believing, then proving with hard data that everything is connected. Her life experiences, science, the forests and her insights are all linked together meaning that as we understand her research, we come to understand phases in her life and relationships. She is always a brave and active companion, striding out deep into mountains and ancient forests in a still masculine world of scientists, loggers and foresters. She finds her way and it is a deep pleasure to accompany her as she describes her journey.

Her writing is both scientific and fantastical, she doesn’t shy away from using mystical tones and language which suffuses the whole tale with a wild magic that makes you want to stride out into the snow and command answers from the wilderness before shimmying up trees to hide from bears!

She always knew trees had secrets to teach us and she has found a way to make them speak and for us to finally start to listen. She describes an awe-inspiring encounter with a mother tree.






‘I stopped and looked back. Silhouetted in the setting sun, rising above the others, rooted in the volcanic rocks that nourished her, was the Mother Tree of this wide swathe of seedlings. Her limbs were spread like arms, gnarled from centuries of snow, scars long healed over, fingertips loaded with cones.’

Here in the UK, The Woodland Trust keeps an ever growing list of our oldest and most important trees. There are already more than 180,000 trees listed but there are thousands more to add. Ancient trees have no blanket level of protection in the UK and can be felled by councils or developers for health and safety reasons or to make way for roads and houses. The Woodland Trust defines an ancient tree as: in the third or final stage of its life, old relative to others of the same species, or interesting biologically, aesthetically or culturally because of its great age. It also records trees of interest which are likely to become ancient trees as the years pass.

I return to the yew tree at Llandre, it has survived plagues, religions, pestilence, kings, peasants and ecological changes. Who knows what information might be stored in it’s roots? It looks alone, solo and achingly individual but I now wonder if that is the whole truth. I look at the ground and imagine what other trees it might be protecting, communicating with and encouraging beneath the soil. Does it even already know how to adapt to climate change? It looks withered, bent, a dark wet brown where the rain has soaked into its branches. A tree that has known stress, divisions, lightning strikes, survived endless change. An important and ancient tree, deserving of reverence and protection.

 

Reading on From Finding the Mother Tree

The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben

The German Forester Peter Wohlleben drew on Suzanne Simard’s research in his 2016 classic The Hidden Life of Trees, which shows how trees communicate and work together as communities. Suzanne even makes a cameo at the end of the book by adding a note to his observations.

 

The Overstory by Richard Powers

Suzanne Simard herself has found her way into this 2019 pulitzer prize winning novel as character Patricia Westerford, the controversial tree scientist. The book is a New York Times bestseller, an epic exploration of environmental activism and features a lot of trees.

 

Underland by Robert Macfarlane

Also published in 2019 this exploration of the underworld takes us on a journey into the worlds beneath our feet and features the ‘wood wide web’ of mycorrhizal fungi.

 

The Signature of All things by Elizabeth Gilbert

Botany is the star in this 2013 poetical romp through the 18th and 19th centuries. Darwin even puts in an appearance, as does the tension between science and nature, the physical and the divine.

Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

Entangled Life is a mind-altering journey into the hidden world of fungus. Published in 2020, it tells us more about the 'Wood Wide Web' as well as the history and secrets of this remarkable lifeform.

All these lovely books and more are available to buy directly from our website!


Happy Reading!