Publication

Simard, Suzanne

Allen Lane (2021), 368 pages

Number of Pages

368

Language

English

Publication Year

2021

Original Language

English

Categories and Tags

Hardcover, Dust Jacket, Dendrology

Dewey Subjects

Economics > Economics of land & energy > Forests & Rainforests > Land, recreational and wilderness areas, energy > Social sciences

About

Suzanne Simard is a pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence; more than 10 million people have viewed her TED talks worldwide.

In this, her first book, now available in paperback, 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 complicated, 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—how trees, living side by side for hundreds of years, have evolved, how they learn and adapt their behaviours, recognize neighbours, compete and cooperate with sophistication, characteristics ascribed to human intelligence, traits that are the essence of civil societies–and at the centre of it all, the Mother Trees: the mysterious, powerful forces that connect and sustain the others that surround them.

And Simard writes of her own life, born and raised in a logging world in the rainforests of British Columbia, of her days as a child spent cataloguing the trees from the forest and how she came to love and respect them. And as she writes of her scientific quest, she writes of her journey, making us understand how deeply human scientific inquiry exists beyond data and technology. It is about understanding who we are and our place in the world.

Location

bu148