What do plants and people have in common? More than you think.
Growing up, Suzanne Simard was captivated by the multicolored layers of humus and mineral soils teeming with worms and bugs and nearly impenetrable tangles of roots coiled together with fungus.聽
How, she wondered, did this exuberant life below the ground connect to the forest above it?聽
In her book, 鈥淔inding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest,鈥� Simard writes about her nearly three decades of work to answer this question. As one of the world鈥檚 leading forest scientists, Simard, a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia, would go on to revolutionize the way many researchers think about trees and their relationships with one another.聽
Simard has become something of a celebrity scientist. She鈥檚 said to have been the model for a lead character, Patricia Westerford, in Richard Powers鈥� 2019 Pulitzer-winning popular novel, 鈥淭he Overstory.鈥� Her vision of the forest as being innately intelligent inspired filmmaker James Cameron鈥檚 2009 science fiction film 鈥淎vatar.鈥澛�
Still, not everyone is a fan. Some scientists regard her use of words like sentient, maternal, and caring to describe trees as being anthropomorphic. Others say her view of harmony in nature is naive. Commercial lumber interests have chafed at her recommendations to log more selectively.
In part to answer these critics, Simard decided to tell her own story. 鈥淔inding the Mother Tree鈥� is a frequently lyrical memoir which puts her work in the context of her lifelong fascination with the forest, and her growing alarm over the massive clearcuts that are transforming the region into a blighted checkerboard.聽
The author writes rapturously about the beauty of British Columbia, home to one of the world鈥檚 last great temperate rainforests, as well as the challenges of working there, which include encounters with grizzly bears, wolves, bugs, and the chemicals that are sprayed by loggers. She also recounts the tragic loss of her brother Kelly, a rodeo artist, her own battle with cancer, and her breakup with her husband when a career move caused the couple to drift apart. This personal narrative reminds us that science is a human enterprise 鈥� and, in Simard鈥檚 case at least, as much a product of the heart as of the head.聽
Simard began her career as a forestry researcher investigating why the fir seedlings in a tree plantation were sickly, whereas the young trees in a nearby forest were thriving. The mature trees in the forest, she discovered, were feeding their own young saplings through intricate underground webs of roots entwined with fungus (called mycorrhizal networks). Plantation seedlings, by contrast, had to fend for themselves.
Trees don鈥檛 only feed their own young, Simard would go on to find. Many have forged complex trading partnerships with other species as well. For example, birches send sugars to firs during the summer when they are creating more than they need through photosynthesis, and firs return the favor during the fall and spring when the birches lack leaves.聽
Simard鈥檚 field work turned the tables on the view of trees as engaged in a fierce competition with one another for water, mineral nutrients, and access to sunlight. The truth, she found, is closer to the indigenous Salish vision of the forest as 鈥渕any nations living side by side in peace,鈥� actively working together to support one another and promote the flourishing of the whole.
Moreover, Simard tells us that trees are not just swapping resources, they are also communicating 鈥� warning their neighbors in real time about insect attacks and other environmental threats by way of chemical messages sent through the subterranean fungal network, which has been dubbed 鈥渢he wood-wide web.鈥� The linchpins of this web are the gentle giants that Simard calls 鈥淢other Trees,鈥� which share their carbon bounty and their 鈥渨isdom鈥� with those that are less well endowed.聽聽
鈥淧lants are attuned to one another鈥檚 strengths and weaknesses,鈥� she writes, 鈥渆legantly giving and taking to attain exquisite balance.鈥� Simard compares diverse species to 鈥渕usicians in an orchestra鈥� creating a music together that is greater than the sum of its parts.
It is a breathtaking vision. But are trees really as wise, intentional, and altruistic as the author suggests? Some say the jury is still out. Yet fewer would argue with her contention that we are needlessly destroying these critical ecosystems that hold vast reserves of carbon and that are a bulwark against climate change.
The good news, Simard says, is that forests have an almost miraculous capacity to recover, if humans give them a half a chance. The author鈥檚 urgent call at the end of the book to preserve our remaining old-growth forest lands could not be more timely.
鈥楲essons From Plants鈥�
Humans have lived on earth for roughly 300,000 years. Plants, by contrast, have been around for a billion years and counting. Beronda L. Montgomery, a biologist who teaches at Michigan State University, argues that plants used that time well, learning how to live in聽 remarkable harmony with one another and with their environment.聽
Montgomery shares her admiration for these ingenious beings in 鈥淟essons From Plants,鈥� an attractive, pocket-book size hardback illustrated with thumbnail drawings and published by Harvard University Press. Despite the Harvard imprimatur, the book is an accessible and, thankfully, jargon-free introduction to a science that has advanced a great deal recently 鈥� and has revolutionized the way that we look at our evolutionary predecessors.聽
Until recently, biologists thought of plants as essentially passive organisms, responding in genetically predetermined ways to the world around them. They orient their leaves toward the sun, and sink their roots deeper into the soil in search of water during dry times. However, it was assumed that they did so by rote. Plants were seen as being alive (in some vague, preconscious way) but certainly not intelligent or capable of making reasoned decisions.
Far from being unfeeling automatons, however, plants know exactly what鈥檚 going on around them, according to Montgomery. Precisely because they are fixed in place and can鈥檛 move, they鈥檝e needed to become 鈥渘osy neighbors,鈥� continually scanning the environment and reacting swiftly to the changes that they perceive.聽
We read, for example, that plants modify their own light-gathering proteins in response to the available wavelengths of sunlight, and they angle their stems away from their neighboring kin to avoid mutually destructive competition. Moreover, many species communicate with one another in the language of scent about threats, like invading insect pests. They also share food (especially with their own young) and they form mutually beneficial partnerships with fungi and bacteria, which release essential nutrients from the air and soil in exchange for photosynthesized sugars.
Talents like these lead the author to conclude that plants have a 鈥渟ense of self鈥� 鈥� insofar as they know who they are, where they are, and what they are supposed to be doing.聽
Does that mean that plants are aware? Wisely, Montgomery does not weigh in on this highly contentious debate. Certainly, plants can鈥檛 tell us about their 鈥渆xperience鈥� of the world. But their actions speak for themselves. The author tells us that plants routinely assess risks, make complicated cost-benefit analyses about the use of limited resources, and use them to decide whether to cooperate or compete with neighbors. They also recall the past to help them anticipate future conditions and to plan ahead.聽
In certain respects, plants are better life-strategists than we are. The author quotes biologist Robin Wall Kimmerer, an聽enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation,聽as saying that 鈥渟cience asks us to learn about organisms. Traditional knowledge asks us to learn from 迟丑别尘.鈥澛�
Much of the second half of the book draws lessons from plant behavior. Native Americans generally grew squash, corn, and beans (the three sisters) together. Corn provided vertical support for the vine-like bean plants, bacteria in the bean roots fixed nitrogen from the air which fertilized their partners, and the floppy squash leaves shaded the ground, preserving moisture and inhibiting the growth of weeds.
鈥淥ne of the greatest lessons we can learn from plants is that there is a power in working together,鈥� the author effuses. 鈥淲e must release our overdependence on individualistic success models....鈥�
Montgomery also applies the lessons she and her colleagues have learned about plants to human relationships. 鈥淏y studying how plants interact with others, we聽can see the importance of establishing an ecosystem聽of support, collegiality, and community,鈥� she writes.
Her attempts to relate her nature studies to academic and business organizational structures can seem at times a bit contrived. She is at her best when she writes more personally, as she does about a white spruce that she planted when her son was born. Watching both boy and tree grow has brought the family joy. She writes of the relationship, 鈥淗e has聽been its caretaker, and it has been his teacher for聽nearly two decades.鈥�
One might have liked more engaging stories like this to add color to the scientific account, which reads at times like a well crafted textbook. But for the curious, 鈥淟essons From Plants鈥� is an excellent introduction to a world that most of us know too little about.
