Books: Finding the Mother Tree. Uncovering the Wisdom and Intelligence of the Forest

Abstract

Suzanne Simard Penguin, 2022, PB, 368pp, £9.49, 978-0141990286 I was given this book by my biologist son who spent lockdown on a desert island, living on coconuts and getting his exercise swinging between trees. Looking at the title, I worried he’d gone full eco-hippy and was trying to get me to hug more of them. But after just four chapters I was demanding to know why Suzanne Simard had — up to now at least—been overlooked for a Nobel Prize. The daughter of foresters in British Columbia, Professor Simard foraged in tree roots as soon as she could crawl. She chewed on what she found (‘mum had to deworm me often’) and developed an early interest in the webs of mycorrhizal fungi—some rich and dense, others sparse and friable — that connected the roots of trees beneath the soil. These buried fungi and the complex ecosystem they support became …