Mother Earth, Mother Trees ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
April 21, 2024
It could be said that Suzanne Simard’s lifelong fascination with forests began one day when she was six and her grandfather’s dog ended up trapped in the outhouse.
Suzanne’s family were loggers in British Columbia, from a time before huge corporations began the practice known as clear-cutting, leaving nothing in their wake except huge devastated areas of bare soil. The extended family would spend time in the summers on houseboats, living in the forest. And one day, the beagle fell into the outhouse.
Suzanne’s grandfather, her father, and uncles sprang into action, digging a new hole alongside the outhouse, in order to make it large enough for them to reach the dog. She watched them dig, and recalled in her memoir how first they carefully cleared away the mushrooms in order to preserve them and replace them later, and then shoveled and chopped through layers of soil and roots. It was her first glimpse of all the life that lay just below the surface, under all the loose twigs and needles and leaves, and she remembered seeing the bright yellow and white threads of fungi that were woven tightly together into a mat, extending in all directions. She described it as a quilt.
The dog was fine, by the way, after a swim in the lake.
During college, Suzanne took a job with one of the large timber companies that were now transforming the forests. They practiced clear cutting – taking everything from large areas, and tearing up and disturbing the forest floor with their heavy machinery. Once an area was cleared, the company would plant new seedlings, faster growing pine to replace the native fir trees, to try to restore the trees as quickly as possible so that they could be harvested again. They used herbicides to eliminate any competition from other plants for the sunshine and water. Suzanne’s job was to check on the new plantings, and chart their progress. What she found was that the seedlings were often dying.
The company assumed that all the seedlings needed was enough water, which, in British Columbian rain forests, should not have been a problem. Suzanne observed that on the edge of the newly planted areas, in undisturbed soil, clumps of native seedlings were green and thriving. The rows of seedlings that had been planted by the logging company were yellowing, dropping needles. When she unearthed a few, she saw that they had not put down any new roots. Out of curiosity, she dug up some of the native seedlings, and found healthy roots, and lots of fungal threads attached to them.
It took years of research, through a master’s degree program, and a doctoral program, to a full professorship in forest ecology, for Suzanne Simard to be able to demonstrate what had begun as a hunch: that in order to thrive, trees need more than water; they need the connections provided not only by their roots, but by the networks of fungi that help to provide nutrients, to make sugars and carbon and minerals more accessible to the roots. Because of the pathways that form between trees in the soil, Suzanne began to think of this system as operating much like human brains.
Timber companies scoffed at her findings, and at her suggestions that new trees be planted in groups, rather than in rows; that old growth trees be left behind in order to foster the growth of new seedlings. They rejected her suggestion that multiple types of trees should be planted, rather than monocultures, and continued to use herbicides to eliminate any plants other than the trees they were trying to grow as quickly as possible. And the companies rejected her theory that the networks of fungi were critical to establishing healthy trees.
Over time, Suzanne also observed that an important component of thriving forests is the ongoing presence of large, old-growth trees, that she named Mother Trees. These are linchpins, the hubs from which the fungal threads needed to transmit nutrients emanated. In addition, while watching rows of new seedlings struggle, she discovered the critical importance of large trees nearby with deep roots, that not only shade the tender new trees, but that draw water up from deep in the earth, and help to distribute it to those tiny new trees with shallow roots.
The logging companies were focused on ending competition among trees; they didn’t want other types of trees mixed in, or larger trees that they feared would block the sun. They viewed forests as places of competition for scarce resources, not as places where different species cooperated and fostered each others’ health and growth.
Thankfully, we are learning differently now. The more we observe, the more willing we are to be curious, the more we learn.
Peter Wohlleben is a German researcher, and the author of the book The Hidden Life of Trees. He told of the fascinating behavior of acacia trees in Africa, and how, when giraffes begin feeding on a tree, it has a way of sending out chemical distress signals in the form of ethylene gas. Other trees nearby will then adapt and somehow produce more bitter tannins in their leaves to make them less palatable to the giraffes. It sounds like science fiction.
But of course, the story is a little more complicated! And in fact, giraffes seem to understand what the trees are up to. They tend to feed facing any wind, so that the gas warnings don’t reach the trees ahead of them. And they move out of range of the gas emissions, to forage on trees out of range of the warning.
We are learning quickly. And we see that Mother Earth knows how to maintain balance; how to distribute resources between the food sources and the foragers, and, in the case of the fungal networks, to shift nutrients to trees that are struggling. We are learning that forests are not just collections of trees competing as individuals for scarce resources, but rather a complex system of interconnected species that support one another, and all of our life on earth.
Here’s another example: we have learned how important salmon are to the nourishment of the forest. Salmon spawn in the rivers, of course, and bears fish for them, catching perhaps 150 salmon per day. The bears take the fish back into the forest to eat, and leave the uneaten remains lying on the ground. Chemical analysis of trees near the rivers show that the nitrogen present in salmon are taken up by trees. The more we learn, the more connections we see.
We are learning quickly. We see that the key to survival of the earth as we know it is balance and cooperation, and symbiosis, not competition. We are learning that much of our survival is dependent on phenomena that we hardly notice, or can barely even see. Creatures as small as honeybees. Networks of fungi.
The question for us this morning, on the eve of another Earth Day, is: are we learning quickly enough? Will we have time to turn away from the Windigo – to reject the voices of profit, of ever-growing consumption? The voices clamoring to just plant more trees, to harvest them more quickly, to find ways to make more money.
This year I have felt a change. For starters we are readily seeing more visible effects of the climate crisis: locally, hardly any snow, hotter summers, more frequent flooding here along the coast, and elsewhere, frequent and catastrophic wildfires. As the planet grows warmer, can the vitally important network of fungi in the forest soil survive? Where trees die off or are harvested, more heat and sunlight penetrate to the forest floor, stressing and possibly killing the fungus. There is much to be worried about.
But I also observed another change in the past year, and that was the matter-of-fact way that the climate crisis was being openly discussed. I feel a shift in the conversation, both because we are learning so much and because we are observing changes. The climate crisis is becoming harder and harder to deny. And as the ancient Chinese proverb asks, ‘good news, bad news, who can tell?’ We have longed for wider acceptance of the need to respond to the climate crisis. So there is good news. But of course, the evidence of the changing climate that fuels the changing conversation is frightening. It’s a double-edge sword.
In 2015 Suzanne Simard launched an extensive research project in British Columbia, known as the Mother Tree Project. She has set up nine experimental forests, in different climates across the province, in order to identify forestry practices that can sustain the health of the forests. This is a long-term study. We will be watching with hope.
Suzanne wrote this: “We have the power to shift course. It’s our disconnectedness – and lost understanding about the amazing capacities of nature – that’s driving a lot of our despair, and plants in particular are objects of our abuse. By understanding their sentient qualities, our empathy and love for trees, plants, and forests will naturally deepen and find innovative solutions. Turning to the intelligence of nature itself is the key.” (Finding the Mother Tree, p. 305.)
We have the power to shift course. We are learning more all the time, and it is becoming easier finally for those who understand the interconnection of species and the unseen efforts to foster each other’s growth and survival to speak up and be heard. It is up to us to find ways to lend our voices to those who are sharing what is being learned about the particular intelligence of nature. May we work to understand it better ourselves, and help to amplify the message that Mother Earth, our common mother, can heal if we listen and help and love her.
Like our bodies when ill or broken, the land and the oceans want to heal. We see the evidence right here on Cape Ann, when we walk around the old quarries, once completely bare of soil and now surrounded by trees and plants. For a brief time we can see the Karner blue butterflies, and soon delight in the lady slippers, the mapleleaf viburnum, and the smell of the sweetfern. Here in the spring of the year, with new shoots emerging daily, we feel the power, the force of life itself, springing forth, unstoppable, offering glimpses of health and joy. May all we see around us offer us hope for the future and faith in the healing connections we share with everything here on Earth.
