Suzanne Simard
Tuesday, October 11th, 2022 08:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudioSo, the audio book I started last July, that I mentioned I'd picked back up yesterday while working, is Finding The Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard... who is the Canadian Scientist who indeed discovered the, "wood wide web," as well as the existance of, "mother trees."
I've got three hours to go on it, so I'll finish it tomorrow at work, but... I'm glad I picked it back up!
You may recall I was doing audio books back in June and July, because I had time to kill, waiting around for the crickets to arrive... but I was unemployed... but I had a ton of unused book credits on Audible, so... free education!
I'd started with a couple bug books, but switched to tree books because I felt I needed to know more about this, wood wide web, because of all the landscaping I'd done to the overgrown yard the previous summer of 2021.. and how the huge hackberry out front had seemed to react by losing leaves all spring and summer.
--<>--
And, Secret Lives of Trees by Peter Wolleben, last July, had inspired me to do the locust seedling transplant... as well as a lot of information about the way trees communicate beneath the soil.
But I didn't know, when I started, Finding The Mother Tree, last summer, that it was actually written by the woman who pioneered the entire concept of the, wood wide web!
So, the first third of the book seemed... kinda boring?.. because I wasn't entirely sure where it was going, and who I was listening to. It was a lot of technical jargon, interwoven with personal stories about family and friends that didn't seem relevant, and slowed things down.
But then, late yesterday, and through my work shift today... I finally got to the good part!
And, as if they could sense it... both Helen, and Vanessa... my two coworkers in the building, found twenty reasons to come ask me questions!
like, I'd been left completely alone for the past three weeks, but as soon as I had the good part of a good audiobook going in the headphones... it was like, "what happened to the flatbed cart? We can't find it!"
"Can you fix this vacuum cleaner hose?"
"Which one of us was supposed to be cleaning this weird little room by the stairs?"
"Do you have any vacuum cleaner bags, because we can't find any!"
And there were contractors in the building, installing a new AC system in the Library, and they needed help... and they stole the flatbed cart... and.... Jesus Christ, everybody!
------------{=0=}------------
At any rate, the good part is when Suzanne finally starts to prove that Birch trees and Douglas Firs are swapping sugars with one another, throughout the course of the year, via their root networks, as aided by fungi, that intertwine with the root systems.
She proved it by infusing one species with Carbon 13, and the other with Carbon 14... both of which are isotopes of the normal Carbon 12, but detectable by instruments.
She proved that sugars were moving both ways, between Birch and Firs, at different times of the year, to the benefit of both species.
What's most amazing is that Birch are deciduous trees, and Douglas Firs are evergreens. So... that much of a biological gap didn't make a difference, and indeed, helped their mutual arrangement.
As evergreens, the firs would be able to photosynthesize sugar in early spring, before the Birch had their leaves... and would help the birch out.
But when the taller Birch began to shade out the firs, later in the summer, they would send sugars back the other way to help out the firs!
Then, in the fall, as the Birch lost their leaves... the firs would pay it back again!
And she showed that both species grew faster, with this arrangement, than either one did alone.
But those had been experiments done on logging lands, with mostly new saplings and seedlings... and she was just trying to show that it wasn't necessary to kill all the birch trees, to get a good crop of Douglas firs.
--<>--
Years later, she was doing experiments in a truly, old growth forest, and that's when she discovered how insanely complex these root and fungal networks could get, between all kinds of different trees and plants... and that the biggest, oldest trees... the mother trees... had huge influence over vast acres... in the success of seedlings, saplings, and full grown trees alike.
They even got detailed DNA profiles of all the plants, and all the species of fungi in the network, to map out how it all worked!
And they weren't just trading rescources around the network, they were trading chemical signals about threats and soforth... to help everybody build up defenses, for example, to pests, etc.
And I'm just to the part where she's starting to think the whole network looks a hell of a lot like a human brain, and operates in an eerily similar way, with synapses and chemical signals moving around in real time.
So, I guess I'll do the full review tomorrow, after I've finished the book, but... yes! this stuff is quite real, and the research goes back 30 years now!
--<>--
The Brilliant part is that Suzanne Simard had almost nothing to go on, when she started out, and no real reason to think any of this was remotely possible!
She was just... a Canadian girl who grew up playing in the forest, as a kid... and who'd heard a few old stories from the Indians about how the forest was aware, and the trees could communicate.
That, and... she worked in the logging industry in her early years, and the way they clear cut land to grow just one species of tree felt... kinda cruel... and financially wasteful.
It was just through instinct, and insight, that she found herself on the path of this groundbreaking discovery, that completely upended the way white foresters had thought about trees for centuries!
--<>--
But I think her discoveries are on par with... plate tectonics, in terms of revolutionizing our understanding of the natural world! It's that big an insight, and it's just as relevant, in this age of climate change, because it tells us about how best to store CO2 from the atmosphere!
Trees, of course, lock up a lot of CO2 in their wood, and breath out oxygen... which we like!
But when a forest is mishandled, and the web breaks down, they become far more vulnerable to fires... as we've seen in recent years... and massive forest fires release more CO2 back into the atmosphere than industrial emissions... over the same time period!
But beyond that, it's just a whole new understanding of trees as life forms... posessing intelligence... at least when networked in large numbers!
Indeed, most modern trees and plants aren't that much older than most modern animals!
Yes, plant life diverged from animal life a long way back... but since then, both have evolved at the same rate.
--<>--
The reality of the, wood wide web, lends a ton of credulity to the whole concept of, "ecosystems," in general... that would include insects, vertibrates, and now, fungi, and bacteria.
It doesn't stop with the plants and fugi working together... the insects and animals are also bound up into the system... as are we!
And if we want to survive... we'd better get our heads around it!
As the most intelligent species on the planet, with the most power to either fuck the planet up, or use our intelligence to improve it... the onus is upon US to do the right thing!
°¦}
https://soundcloud.com/snoozefestaudio
I've got three hours to go on it, so I'll finish it tomorrow at work, but... I'm glad I picked it back up!
You may recall I was doing audio books back in June and July, because I had time to kill, waiting around for the crickets to arrive... but I was unemployed... but I had a ton of unused book credits on Audible, so... free education!
I'd started with a couple bug books, but switched to tree books because I felt I needed to know more about this, wood wide web, because of all the landscaping I'd done to the overgrown yard the previous summer of 2021.. and how the huge hackberry out front had seemed to react by losing leaves all spring and summer.
And, Secret Lives of Trees by Peter Wolleben, last July, had inspired me to do the locust seedling transplant... as well as a lot of information about the way trees communicate beneath the soil.
But I didn't know, when I started, Finding The Mother Tree, last summer, that it was actually written by the woman who pioneered the entire concept of the, wood wide web!
So, the first third of the book seemed... kinda boring?.. because I wasn't entirely sure where it was going, and who I was listening to. It was a lot of technical jargon, interwoven with personal stories about family and friends that didn't seem relevant, and slowed things down.
But then, late yesterday, and through my work shift today... I finally got to the good part!
And, as if they could sense it... both Helen, and Vanessa... my two coworkers in the building, found twenty reasons to come ask me questions!
like, I'd been left completely alone for the past three weeks, but as soon as I had the good part of a good audiobook going in the headphones... it was like, "what happened to the flatbed cart? We can't find it!"
"Can you fix this vacuum cleaner hose?"
"Which one of us was supposed to be cleaning this weird little room by the stairs?"
"Do you have any vacuum cleaner bags, because we can't find any!"
And there were contractors in the building, installing a new AC system in the Library, and they needed help... and they stole the flatbed cart... and.... Jesus Christ, everybody!
At any rate, the good part is when Suzanne finally starts to prove that Birch trees and Douglas Firs are swapping sugars with one another, throughout the course of the year, via their root networks, as aided by fungi, that intertwine with the root systems.
She proved it by infusing one species with Carbon 13, and the other with Carbon 14... both of which are isotopes of the normal Carbon 12, but detectable by instruments.
She proved that sugars were moving both ways, between Birch and Firs, at different times of the year, to the benefit of both species.
What's most amazing is that Birch are deciduous trees, and Douglas Firs are evergreens. So... that much of a biological gap didn't make a difference, and indeed, helped their mutual arrangement.
As evergreens, the firs would be able to photosynthesize sugar in early spring, before the Birch had their leaves... and would help the birch out.
But when the taller Birch began to shade out the firs, later in the summer, they would send sugars back the other way to help out the firs!
Then, in the fall, as the Birch lost their leaves... the firs would pay it back again!
And she showed that both species grew faster, with this arrangement, than either one did alone.
But those had been experiments done on logging lands, with mostly new saplings and seedlings... and she was just trying to show that it wasn't necessary to kill all the birch trees, to get a good crop of Douglas firs.
Years later, she was doing experiments in a truly, old growth forest, and that's when she discovered how insanely complex these root and fungal networks could get, between all kinds of different trees and plants... and that the biggest, oldest trees... the mother trees... had huge influence over vast acres... in the success of seedlings, saplings, and full grown trees alike.
They even got detailed DNA profiles of all the plants, and all the species of fungi in the network, to map out how it all worked!
And they weren't just trading rescources around the network, they were trading chemical signals about threats and soforth... to help everybody build up defenses, for example, to pests, etc.
And I'm just to the part where she's starting to think the whole network looks a hell of a lot like a human brain, and operates in an eerily similar way, with synapses and chemical signals moving around in real time.
So, I guess I'll do the full review tomorrow, after I've finished the book, but... yes! this stuff is quite real, and the research goes back 30 years now!
The Brilliant part is that Suzanne Simard had almost nothing to go on, when she started out, and no real reason to think any of this was remotely possible!
She was just... a Canadian girl who grew up playing in the forest, as a kid... and who'd heard a few old stories from the Indians about how the forest was aware, and the trees could communicate.
That, and... she worked in the logging industry in her early years, and the way they clear cut land to grow just one species of tree felt... kinda cruel... and financially wasteful.
It was just through instinct, and insight, that she found herself on the path of this groundbreaking discovery, that completely upended the way white foresters had thought about trees for centuries!
But I think her discoveries are on par with... plate tectonics, in terms of revolutionizing our understanding of the natural world! It's that big an insight, and it's just as relevant, in this age of climate change, because it tells us about how best to store CO2 from the atmosphere!
Trees, of course, lock up a lot of CO2 in their wood, and breath out oxygen... which we like!
But when a forest is mishandled, and the web breaks down, they become far more vulnerable to fires... as we've seen in recent years... and massive forest fires release more CO2 back into the atmosphere than industrial emissions... over the same time period!
But beyond that, it's just a whole new understanding of trees as life forms... posessing intelligence... at least when networked in large numbers!
Indeed, most modern trees and plants aren't that much older than most modern animals!
Yes, plant life diverged from animal life a long way back... but since then, both have evolved at the same rate.
The reality of the, wood wide web, lends a ton of credulity to the whole concept of, "ecosystems," in general... that would include insects, vertibrates, and now, fungi, and bacteria.
It doesn't stop with the plants and fugi working together... the insects and animals are also bound up into the system... as are we!
And if we want to survive... we'd better get our heads around it!
As the most intelligent species on the planet, with the most power to either fuck the planet up, or use our intelligence to improve it... the onus is upon US to do the right thing!
°¦}
