Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

Really cool listen about how the forest is connected. Susan put decades of hard work in to proving that the forest shares just about everything, and needs a diversity of native plants to operate at maximum health.

I heard Suzanne interviewed when this book came out. I was so pleased that she narrates this book. I cried when I finished and I have since read everything I can on the Mother Tree Project. Thank you Suzanne for your commitment to our forests and ultimately our planet.

Finally proving with science what all of our ancestors knew. She should go down in history as one of the people that completely changes the way modern society looks at the forest ecosystem and with trees in general. It gets a little repetitive but wonderfully descriptive details about the amazing world within the forest.

This has changed my relationship to the natural world.

This is an important and seminal work, but I found it mostly tedious as an audiobook. I was glad to hear the book in the author's own voice, but she is a much better scientist than she is a narrator (indeed, she often says that she was never a good public speaker). This book is mostly a memoir, and I found that I was less interested in her life story than I was in the science. Yet because the science is complicated, much of what she tells us is difficult to comprehend when heard rather than read, and she necessarily uses scientific terms which are not defined for the listener. Her narration often misplaces the emphasis in a sentence, so it has to be re-played multiple times to make any sense, even though her Canadian accent ensures that her diction is clear. Despite all these drawbacks, I found her story compelling.

This book is so important. One of the best books I’ve read. Thank you so much for your research, and for sharing your story in such a compelling way.

The book is 3/4 an autobiography. It's not a bad thing... The book details Simard's life from her start in the Forestry industry, through school, her research leading to essentially finding the "Mother Trees", her relationships (friends, co-workers, lovers, children, etc.), her health, and her life during all of this. I think I was expecting something different: more science and discoveries based. I had, prior to reading this book, done a lot of reading on the forest, plants, and fungi. I already understood the role of mycorrizae. For those reasons, perhaps that is why this book wasn't what I expected. If you would like more description into what Simard proved through her research, in conjunction with other prominent research/discoveries in forest ecology, I would recommend the book, The Hidden Life of Trees (Peter Wohlleben). "The Nature of Things" show (can find free on YouTube) with David Suzuki also covers Simard's, and others, contributions to science. Finding The Mother Tree was still a good read, just not my favorite for the reasons above.