Mother Trees that Nurture Forests
The mysterious forces which connect trees into a cooperative society.
Happy Mother’s Day week!
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GOOD MOTHERING IS A FORM OF NURTURING, and it’s not unique to the human species. Mother bears are fiercely protective of their cubs, as are many mammals and birds who invest much time and labor to bear offspring.
But what about trees? We don’t usually think of them as being nurturing, but it turns out nature has endowed trees with the ability to be supportive parents as well.
Forest ecologist Suzanne Simard, who gave us the term “Mother Tree,” is a Canadian scientist and professor at the University of British Columbia. She spent years studying the relationships between the trees in the Pacific Northwest, wondering why some trees thrived while others didn’t.
I recently read her book, Finding the Mother Tree, Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest (published by Alfred Knopf, 2021) In it, she tells the parallel tales of her life as well as her scientific discoveries about the tree communities of the forest.
Any species that can nurture another species has a native intelligence. Our knowledge of plant and tree communication and intelligence grows every year and Simard has been a leader in the field. (She explains how underground tree communication works in a YouTube video here.)
What defines a Mother Tree?
Mother Trees are large trees within a forest that act as centralized hubs, supporting communication and nutrient exchange amongst trees.
Suzanne Simard, Forest Ecologist, quoted in One Tree Planted blog, “Celebrating Mother’s Day in the Forest”
These older trees have massive crowns that rise above other trees, with deeply connected root systems “which form hubs of what we call neurological networks,” Simard explained in an interview with Greater Good Magazine.
Mother Trees provide many services to their smaller related trees and other plants nearby.
They recognize kin, supply resources, share wisdom, sound alarms, support networks of hundreds of trees, foster deep connections and alliances, and pass their legacies down to future generations.
Amazing Things Mother Trees Do:
Use their deep roots to draw up water and share it with shallow-rooted seedlings
Detect the distress signals of neighboring trees and respond by sending them nutrients,
Reduce their root competition to make elbow room for their "kids"
Pump sugar and other lifesaving resources like carbon, nitrogen and phosphorous into the roots of young saplings
Infect saplings with mycorrhizal fungi, pulling them into the supportive embrace of the wood wide web, where life-saving help is available
One Tree Planted blog, “Celebrating Mother’s Day in the Forest”
Most of the communication between Mother Trees and other plants happens on the “Wood Wide Web” of mycorrhizal fungi. Just a cup of healthy forest soil can contain many miles of fungal filaments which wend their way into the tiniest cracks in the soil, connecting Mother Tree roots with the roots of their kin and other plants and fungi.
Part of Simard’s work was done by studying the relationship between birch, spruce, and Douglas fir. Logging companies were clear-cutting areas of forest, then replanting with only the commercially viable timber such as spruce. But the replantings weren’t growing well. What was missing?
Simard spent time observing, creating her own planted plots of both mixed and single species trees. She examined tree roots, growth rates, and fungus links. Her treks into remote Northwest forests sent her into the paths of grizzly bears, wolves, and numerous birds and animals. But her biggest challenges came from the unwillingness of timber companies to change their ways after hearing about the new science of forest interdependency.
Her early work with timber companies exposed her to possibly carcinogenic compounds in Roundup and other hazards. She later contracted breast cancer which spread to her lymph glands. Her remedy, ironically, came from another tree. She was prescribed Taxol, which was derived from the Pacific yew tree, growing in the same forests she was exploring. Simard credits that plus her close alliance with her chemotherapy friends and family as saving her life.
And so it was the togetherness with the tree. It was the togetherness with my friends and then my children too…I could hardly walk. I was so exhausted. But we would go to the yew trees and we would just sit around them and thank them. And it gave us all so much hope and I got through it.
Suzanne Simard, interviewed in a postcast from Greater Good Magazine, Episode 92: What Humans can Learn from Trees.
Simard emerged from that difficult period to publish more of her scientific studies. She documented that Mother Trees do many things to benefit the forest around them. Amazingly, their own seedlings have a 400% better chance of survival with their nearby presence. The bigger trees wick up water from their deep roots to share, provide shelter from the elements, and send nutrients to their smaller and more fragile neighbors.
And it’s not only the Mother Trees’s kin that benefits. Everything growing around it is healthier because trees share resources. Eventually, the smaller trees and plants are able to reciprocate and help the Mother Trees as benefits are passed back and forth. There is no Elon Musk of the tree world, who dominates resources, but rather many forest hubs with Mother Trees. There is a lesson here for the human world.
Interspecies alliances are common — and necessary — in the face of threats like insect colonization, tree diseases, deforestation, and climate-related disturbances like droughts and wildfires.
One Tree Planted blog, “Celebrating Mother’s Day in the Forest”
Suzanne Simard describes how trees recognize others, cooperate, learn and adapt their behavior, and have characteristics that are like the best of civil societies, according to her book Finding the Mother Tree, Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest.
Lastly, Mother Trees who are at the end of their lives will send nutrients, sugar, and valuable resources to nearby trees, giving life-enhancing elements away in a final act of generosity. Mothers of the world would understand the deep nurturing impulse behind this act of giving.
Happy celebration of mothers and all nurturing beings!
The story of Suzanne Simard and her discoveries is being made into a movie starring Amy Adams.
Thanks to One Tree Planted for highlighting Mother Trees this week. You can read their post on their blog site here.
More on tree communication: Peter Wohlleben, a German forester and author of The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate, is another forest expert who has studied the interdependency of trees. His studies were featured in an article by Smithsonian Magazine.
The timber industry in particular sees forests as wood-producing systems and battlegrounds for survival of the fittest.
There is now a substantial body of scientific evidence that refutes that idea. It shows instead that trees of the same species are communal, and will often form alliances with trees of other species. Forest trees have evolved to live in cooperative, interdependent relationships, maintained by communication and a collective intelligence similar to an insect colony.
Richard Grant, Smithsonian Magazine, Do Trees Talk to Each Other?
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Loved this article about mother trees!