Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

Simard and Don decide to buy a house in Nelson for Don to live in with their daughters while Simard commutes nine hours each weekend from her home in Vancouver. As she is driving home one weekend, she pulls into a turnout to inspect the firs. She is scouting areas to conduct a new experiment on creating a map of mycorrhizal networks in the forest. She cores a few firs and digs around their roots, noting how fungal networks seem to link older trees with nearby seedlings. Simard’s research focus begins to shift to the concept of Mother Trees that are “connected to every one of the younger trees regenerated around [them]” (221). She postulates that this explains why seedlings can survive for long periods of time in the shade: They are replenished with nutrients through the roots of their Mother Tree. If the mycorrhizal network reflects the human neural network, then Simard wonders if trees can communicate nutritional needs, threats, or resource availability between themselves, with the hubs being the Mother Trees. If she can prove this, the mycorrhizal network would be a mark of vegetal intelligence. As she continues her drive to Nelson, Simard considers how these new ideas would fit into the climate change debate currently occupying most of ecological studies.