What is the main message of Finding the Mother Tree?

The book Finding the Mother Tree explores the complex connection and communication between trees and their surrounding environment.

How long does it take to read Finding the Mother Tree?

The reading time for Finding the Mother Tree varies depending on the reader's speed. However, the Blinkist summary can be read in just 15 minutes.

Is Finding the Mother Tree a good book? Is it worth reading?

Finding the Mother Tree is worth reading for its fascinating insights into the hidden world of trees and Suzanne Simard's personal journey as a scientist. Highly recommended!

Who is the author of Finding the Mother Tree?

The author of Finding the Mother Tree is Suzanne Simard.

Finding the Mother Tree Summary of Key Ideas and Review

Name: Finding the Mother Tree
Rating: 4.5 (226 reviews)
Author: Suzanne Simard

Introduction

What’s in it for me? An intimate trek through the forest –⁠ and the life of an influential ecologist.

Young Suzanne watched Dad and Uncle Jack as they dug into the earth. First, they cleared away the top layer of leaves, twigs, cones, and feathers, and raked them into a pile. Fungal threads, a mix of shining yellow and pure white, enmeshed the debris like a spiderweb.

Next, Uncle Jack chopped into the dirt with his pickaxe, revealing a layer of dark cocoa-like humus – the substance produced by dying and decaying plants. Suzanne watched, enthusiastically chewing a piece of humus she’d picked up. She’d always loved the taste of dirt, rich and sweet.

As Uncle Jack and Dad continued to dig down, they revealed further layers of earth, where tree roots were woven into an almost impenetrable tangle of umber and ochre. Finally, they reached a layer of rocks, which they coaxed out with a crowbar. The family’s dog, Jiggs, had fallen through the floor of an outhouse and was trapped underground –⁠ and now they could finally pull him free.

Suzanne didn’t know it at the time, but this adventure would be a turning point in her life. It revealed the vast, rich world that existed underneath and throughout the forest –⁠ a world to which Suzanne, now a renowned ecologist, would dedicate her life.

In these blinks, you’ll explore

how fungi can help trees grow;
what really happens when you spray herbicides; and
how a tree acts like a mother.

Key idea 1 of 9

Murder Mystery

Tendrils of fog curled around the limbs and trunks of the trees. The needles of the firs, coated by damp mist, shone in the midafternoon light. Suzanne ran her fingers along their branches, feeling the feathery softness of the needles.

Her destination was a clear-cut –⁠ a 30-hectare section of completely felled trees. This particular clear-cut belonged to the logging company she’d started working for a few weeks back. New seedlings had been planted there, and it was Suzanne’s job to assess their growth.

Along the way, she spotted a Suillus mushroom, with its flat brown cap resembling a big pancake. She plucked one out of the ground and saw tiny yellow threads –⁠ mycelium –⁠ stretching from the stem down into the soil. The mushroom was merely the fruit of the fungus –⁠ the small, visible part of an organism that, underground, was vast and elaborate.

As Suzanne continued toward the clear-cut, her boot suddenly slipped. In an attempt to keep her balance, she instinctively grabbed a nearby sapling, ripping it out of the ground as she fell down the slope. When she finally came to a rest, she was still holding onto the young tree.

Its roots, she noticed, were coated in humus –⁠ but there was something else. The tips of the roots were glowing bright yellow, just like the Suillus mushroom she’d picked up. Curious, she began to dig into the forest floor. Every part of the soil, it seemed, was webbed with that same yellow mycelium, along with mycelium of other colors. What was their purpose?

Eventually, Suzanne reached the clear-cut. The dead remains of the trees, white and weathered, jutted out of the soil like bones, while the new seedlings sprouted in neat, even rows to maximize the timber yield.

Well, that was the theory, anyway. But these seedlings seemed barely alive. Pulling an especially sad-looking one from the ground, she examined its roots: coarse and black, with no white tips. The planting job was perfect, yet something was wrong. The roots were failing to connect with the soil.

Nearby, she spotted a healthy fir tree that had, by chance, sprouted from a random seed. This tree was firmly rooted in the soil, and when she examined the root tips, she was amazed. Dripping from them were bright yellow fungal threads, the same color as the Suillus mycelium.

Something seemed significant about this discovery. What exactly were these mycelium doing? Were they helping or harming the seedlings – or neither?

A laundry list of possibilities ran through Suzanne’s head as she wrote down her analysis of the plantation: it was a failure. But what should the logging company do about it? Replant all the seedlings using the same methods? That would be the cheapest option, unless the seedlings all died again. A new solution was needed –⁠ but what?

Key idea 2 of 9

Mutualism

Suzanne’s brother, Kelly, straddled the fence separating his bull from the arena. He wore a brown cowboy hat, denim jeans, and leather chaps –⁠ a vision of the Wild West, displaced in time. This was the venerable tradition of the rodeo.

Kelly tipped his hat to the referee, grasped the rope wrapped around the bull’s neck, and straddled the furious animal. The gate swung open, and the bull’s limbs immediately began kicking and twisting in every direction.

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Key idea 3 of 9

Executioner

Wrapping pink ribbon around the trees, Suzanne and Ray, her colleague, marked out the margins of the new clear-cut. Within its borders lay 500-year-old trees. Each one was condemned to death.

The thought made Suzanne cry. She didn’t object –⁠ this was part of her job. But her participation in the execution seemed heinous and brutally opposed to nature. What was she doing?

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Key idea 4 of 9

Experimentation

When Suzanne landed a permanent job as a silviculture researcher with the Forest Service, she immediately felt a whole new world open up before her. She was now free to ask important questions and conduct experiments that would allow her to explore her theories about the forest.

With her first research grant, she would test the effects of mycorrhizal connections on the survival of conifer seedlings. Additionally, she would test whether or not native plants helped forge those mycorrhizal connections between seedlings and fungi.

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Key idea 5 of 9

Fighting Words

The audience loomed in front of her, dark and menacing. Just imagine they’re all cabbages, she told herself. Like Dad said to do.

On this day, she was presenting the results of her master’s degree experiment, in which she’d tested the effects of alder trees on pine growth. She was especially nervous because her research had revealed some uncomfortable –⁠ but vital –⁠ truths.

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Key idea 6 of 9

The Wood Wide Web

The carbon-transfer field data had finally arrived on her desk. Suzanne could hardly breathe as her eyes scanned the report –⁠ she had to double- and triple-check the results. They didn’t feel real.

For her doctoral research, Suzanne had tested the relationships between paper birch and Douglas fir trees. What she’d found was that paper birch –⁠ once thought to be a competitor of the fir –⁠ was actually helping the fir survive. But there was more to it than that. The two were actually trading carbon back and forth via their shared mycorrhizal network. The birch was so generous with its donations that the firs were able to use the carbon to reproduce –⁠ and as the birch grew taller and produced more shade, it compensated by donating more and more carbon to neighboring firs.

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Key idea 7 of 9

The Mother Tree

The sun beat down on Suzanne as she checked the time. It was still a couple of hours until 4:00 p.m. She’d have to leave by then if she wanted to be home by midnight. Don hadn’t taken well to life in Vancouver, so the family had moved to the much smaller city of Nelson, British Columbia, which was nearer to Suzanne’s family. Suzanne would continue teaching in Vancouver, however –⁠ which meant a nine-hour commute home every weekend.

Suddenly, a swarm of wasps emerged from a nearby hole. One of them jabbed a stinger into her, and a welt immediately began to form.

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Key idea 8 of 9

Parting Gift

Ten years had passed since she’d first accepted the teaching job at the University of British Columbia. The nine-hour commute had chewed away at her marriage; it seemed like she and Don were always quarreling. In the summer of 2012, they decided to separate.

Later that year, as Suzanne headed back home to Nelson to help her daughters prepare for school, she drove by a vast expanse of gray, shriveled husks of ponderosa pine trees. They’d been decimated by an infestation of mountain pine beetle.

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Key idea 9 of 9

Tree Medicine

Suzanne’s cancer treatment required a double mastectomy. After both of her breasts were removed, she’d thought her ordeal would be over. And it would have been –⁠ if the cancer hadn’t spread to her lymph nodes. But it had.

Now, a new round of treatments would begin: eight chemotherapy infusions over four months. The first half would consist of administration of a drug called “Red Devil.” The second half would consist of infusions of paclitaxel –⁠ a medicine that came from yew trees.

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