By Dr. Suzanne Simard
Published May 4, 2021, in Canada by Allen Lane Canada
A world-leading expert shares her amazing story of discovering the communication that exists between trees and shares her own story of family and grief.
Dr. Suzanne Simard was born and raised in the rainforests of British Columbia and has forged a lifelong relationship of love and respect with the trees. This relationship was the driving force behind her decision to dedicate her life to better understanding the forest and the network that connects the plant life within.
With humour, emotion, and the narrative drive of a lifelong storyteller, Dr. Simard takes readers on an intimate journey of ground-breaking scientific discovery. Linking her research to her personal experiences, she recounts her life’s work uncovering the Wood Wide Web, the underground mycelium network that connects all the trees and plants within a forest. It is a network that allows them to share not only nutrients, but also information, all of which originates from the hubs called Mother Trees.
Readers will journey with Dr. Simard into this massive experiment, from dramatic encounters with wildlife to the ground-breaking “Aha” moments in a lab, from learning how to use this network to promote plant growth to understanding what this network can teach us about combatting climate change. Dramatic, funny, touching, and evocative, Finding the Mother Tree offers an intimate and personal look at discovery. This book is not about how we can save the trees, but about how the trees might actually save us.
Dr. Suzanne Simard is a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia where she currently leads The Mother Tree Project and co-directs the Belowground Ecosystem Group. Dr. Simard has earned a global reputation for pioneering research on tree connectivity and communication, and for studying the impact on the productivity, health, and biodiversity of forests. Her work has been published widely, with over 170 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals, including Nature, Ecology, and Global Biology, and she has co-authored the book Climate Change and Variability. Her research has been communicated broadly through three TED Talks, TED Experiences, and articles and interviews in The New Yorker, National Geographic, The Globe and Mail, NPR, CNN, CBC, and many other news outlets. She lives with her two adventurous daughters and their wild and crazy extended family in the mountains around Nelson, British Columbia.
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