From the world's leading forest ecologist who forever changed how people view trees and their
connections to one another and to other living things in the forest--a moving deeply personal
journey of discovery of how as a child in love with the woods the author came to believe that
trees communicate with one another and the story--spiritual and scientific--of how she proved
her seemingly laughable theory uncovering their secrets as well and her own and in the
process became a world-renowned scientist. Suzanne Simard is a pioneer on the frontier of plant
communication and intelligence she's been compared to Rachel Carson hailed as a scientist who
conveys complex technical ideas in a way that is both dazzling and profound. Her scientific
work has been called revolutionary and spiritual. Her work has influenced filmmakers (the Tree
of Souls of James Cameron's Avatar) and her TED talks have been viewed by more than 10 million
people worldwide. Now in her first book Simard brings us into her world the intimate world
of the trees in which she brilliantly illuminates the fascinating and vital truths--that trees
are not simply the source of timber or pulp but are a complex interdependent circle of life
that forests are social cooperative creatures connected through underground networks by which
trees communicate their vitality and vulnerabilities with communal lives not that different
from our own. Simard writes--in inspiring illuminating and accessible ways--that trees
living side by side for hundreds of years have evolved that they perceive one another learn
and adapt their behaviors recognize neighbors and remember the past have agency about the
future elicit warnings and mount defenses compete and cooperate with one another with
sophistication characteristics ascribed to human intelligence traits that are the essence of
civil societies--and at the center of it all the Mother Trees: the mysterious powerful forces
that connect and sustain them. Simard writes of her own life born and raised into a logging
world in the rainforests of British Columbia of her days as a child spent cataloging the trees
from the forest and how she came to love and respect them--and to wonder about them--embarking
on a journey of discovery and struggle. And as she writes of her scientific quest she writes
of her own journey of love and loss of observation and change of risk and reward making us
see that deeply human scientific inquiry exists beyond data and technology that it is about
coming to understand who we are and our place in the world and in writing of her own life we
come to see the true connectedness of the mother tree that links and nurtures the forest in the
profound ways that families and human societies do and that it is these inseperable bonds that
enable all our survival.
