Category Archives: Plants

Below Ground Symbiosis

Nature, New Attitude to Nature, Plants, Science

 

Before Simard and her colleagues did their work, scientists had thought that this belowground mutualistic symbiosis called a mycorrhiza was involved. Mycorrhiza literally means “fungus root.” You see their reproductive organs when you walk through the forest. They include things like mushrooms. However, the mushrooms are really just the visible result. Underground are networks of fungal threads that form a mycelium that infects and colonizes the roots of all the trees and plants in the ecosystem. Where the fungal cells interact with the root cells, there is a trade of carbon for nutrients.  The fungus gets those nutrients by growing through the soil and coating every soil particle. The web that is created is so dense that there can be hundreds of kilometers of mycelium under a single footstep in the forest.

 

 

The mycelium connects different individuals in the forest to each other. In fact, that connection is not just between members of the same species but even between species.  That is how different species such as birch and fir are connected.  The analogy Simard and others have used is the Internet—an information highway. Underneath the ground of the forest there is a vibrant thriving interconnected ecosystem connected by means of the underground Internet. It is a truly remarkable discover.

 

Like all networks, the underground mycorrhizal networks have nodes and links. Simard made a map by examining the short sequences of DNA of every tree and every fungal individual in a patch of Douglas fir forest. With that she drew a picture with circles representing Douglas Fir.  These are the nodes. The lines on the other hand represent the Douglas fir.  The lines that interlink bodies on this underground information highway show how the interlinking fungal highways work.

 

The largest and darkest nodes are the busiest nodes. Simard calls those Hub trees or more colorfully Mother Trees.  Her research demonstrated that the “Mother Trees…nurture their young, the ones growing in the understory.” Her map also showed yellow dots that represented young seedlings that have established themselves within the network of the old mother trees. In a single forest, a mother tree can be connected to hundreds of other trees. And using isotope tracers, Simard and her colleagues found that mother trees will send their excess carbon through the mycorrhizal network to the understory seedlings.  Their research also shows that this “nurturing action by Mother Trees has increased seedling survival by four times.”  That is a substantial benefit. It is well known that some species, such as humans for example and many others favor their own offspring. Simard wanted to know if Douglas fir did the same thing?  Could they recognize and then help their own relatives? To determine that she devised an experiment where they grew mother trees with their own kin. And also stranger’s seedlings.

That experiment showed that the trees do recognize their kin. Mother trees colonize their kin with bigger mycorrhizal networks. They also send them more carbon below ground. They even reduce their own root competition to make growing room for their offspring.

 

Their research even showed that “when mother trees are injured or dying, they also send messages of wisdom on to the next generation of seedlings.”

 

Simard also used isotope tracing to trace carbon moving from an injured mother tree down her trunk into the mycorrhizal network and into her neighboring seedlings. They also discovered that besides carbon they sent out defense signals. And these two compounds have increased the resistance of those seedlings to future stresses. “So trees talk”. They not only talk to each other trees help each other. To some extent they embody Marx’s maxim, “from each according to his ability to each according to their needs.” Trees are Marxists! Trees have conversations that go back and forth. As Simard said, “Those conversations actually increase the resilience of the whole community. It probably reminds you of our own social communities, and our families, well, at least some families.” For example, trees share some characteristics of ant colonies.

 

As a result of all this data, Simard has reached the conclusion that forest are much more than collections of trees. Forests are “complex systems with hubs and networks that overlap and connect trees and allow them to communicate, and they provide avenues for feedbacks and adaptation, and this makes the forest resilient. That’s because there are many hub trees and many overlapping networks.”

 

Although all of this breeds resilience it cannot breed omnipotence.  Trees in the forest ecosystem are also “vulnerable not only to natural disturbances like bark beetles that preferentially attack big old trees but high-grade logging and clear-cut logging.

 

It is always possible to take out a couple of hub trees out of a forest. It can survive such a disturbance.  However, the more that is taken out of the complex forest system the more likely it is that eventually the system will collapse. The big question of course, is how close are our forests to collapse. Collapses can come suddenly and for many reasons.

 

When her talk was over Simard asked her audience if they were thinking about forests differently after this talk. Her audience said they were, so Simard was satisfied. She wants all of us to think differently about forests. I would say we should all have a different attitude to nature. That what I want too.

 

How Trees in a forest Communicate with Each Other?

Nature, New Attitude to Nature, Plants

 

I have been thinking a lot about forests lately. Forests are endlessly fascinating. If you are tired of forests, you are tired of life. I also says that about orchids.

 

“A forest is much more than what you see,” says forest ecologist Suzanne Simard. Her 30 years of research in Canadian forests have led to an astounding discovery — trees talk, often and over vast distances. I listened to a Ted Talk that she gave at Banff, Alberta in 2016.  It was extremely interesting. After listening to her I thought about forests in entirely new ways.  I had a new attitude to nature.

 

She said that forests are not just a collection of trees, as we tend to think of them. That is certainly how foresters and loggers think of them. They use the expression “stand.” According to Simard, “Yes, trees are the foundation of forests, but a forest is much more than what you see.”

 

Forests are complex systems.  What you see above ground is just a part of that system. As Simard pointed out, “underground there is this other world, a world of infinite biological pathways that connect trees and allow them to communicate and allow the forest to behave as though it’s a single organism. It might remind you of a sort of intelligence.” This is a shocking way to think about forests.  It goes entirely against a long history of forestry science.  It is a rebellious way to think about forests.

When Simard’s dog fell into her outhouse and she and her grandfather tried to rescue it, she began to realize that there was a lot beneath the surface and that science had not paid sufficient attention to this subterranean world.  She saw “that palette of roots and soils was really the foundation of the forest.”

 

As a result of her epiphany she studied forestry at university. That she worked with those who were literally battling the forests. They were in a war against the forests and the forests were losing. She was alarmed by the extensive clear-cutting, but also the spraying of chemicals as part of this military engagement and the hacking, as she called it, of aspens and birches to make room for more commercially valuable planted pines and firs. This disturbed her greatly. “It seemed that nothing could stop this relentless industrial machine.”

 

She went back to school and studied some more.  There she noticed that scientists in the laboratory had discovered that one pine seedling root could transmit carbon to another pine seedling root. She wondered if that could be observed in a real world forest. She believed that “ Trees in real forests might also share information below ground.” This was extremely controversial.  Many scientists did not accept that trees could “communicate.”  This was to them an entirely foreign concept. It was anthropomorphizing forests like Jane Goodall had been anthropomorphizing chimpanzees. Scientists have also said that they must resist that temptation. As a result, she had trouble getting funding for her proposed research projects.

 

Eventually she got some funding, but it meant the research would have to be done on the cheap. She wanted to do her research in the forests. She grew 80 replicates of three tree species: Paper birch, Douglas fir, and western red cedar.

 

Simard surmised that the birch and the fir would be connected in a below ground web, but not the cedar. It was in its own other world.  She got her scientific apparatus, many supplies and tools from Canadian Tire. But she also secured some sophisticated equipment from her university, including  a Geiger counter, a scintillation counter, a mass spectrometer, microscopes. After that she actually got some really dangerous stuff: syringes full of radioactive carbon-14 carbon dioxide gas and some high pressure bottles of the stable isotope carbon-13 carbon dioxide gas. She had obtained the legal right to do that for her research, but she had to be careful.

 

Her research revealed some fascinating stuff. I will talk about that next time.

 

The Forest is a Socialist Community

Affinity, Books, Environment, Nature, Plants, World of ideas

 

Professor Suzanne Simard of the University of British Columbia has become a bit of a celebrity as a result of the best-selling book she wrote about forest communities and in particular the Mother Tree. Her book was called Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forrest. The popular television show Ted Lasso had a character say on that show: You know we used to believe trees competed with each other for light.  Suzanne’s field work challenged that perception and we now realize that the forest is socialist community. Trees work in harmony to share the sunlight.” Believe it or not trees share! Go figure.

 

Simard says that her research into trees has shown trees are able to transmit information about potential disease and pest threats to the other trees through a network of underground fungal root systems that allow trees to share carbon, water, and other nutrients. Added to that, even more surprisingly,  they share information.

 

She has been working in Douglas fir forests near Kamloops B.C.

 

The actual descripitons of some of her scientific experiments are quite interesting. You will have to read the book to get the information. As a result of her research, she was able to produce a map showing trees are connected through underground fungal roots systems. Simard found forests are communities and mother trees are their lifeblood. As she explained,

“They’re actually like societies. They have these deep relationships with each other, the trees do, and with all the other creatures in the forest. It’s like this big interrelated community and there are all kinds of sophisticated ways that they communicate and interact with each other.”

 

The researchers found,

 

“What we found in connecting this map is that pretty much all of the trees were connected together. They had multiple linkages with each other and what emerged from map is the biggest oldest trees were the most highly connected. That’s why we started calling it the mother tree, because all of this convergence of information led us to realize that these really old trees were really essential. They’re like the nucleus of the forest in regenerating the forest.”

 

This goes to give further evidence that what all the world’s major religions have been saying for centuries is true, namely that we are all connected. All life is connected. We are all kin.

 

Tree People

Affinity, Books, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy, Nature, New Attitude to Nature, Plants

 

Suzanne Simard understands the importance of logging in British Columbia. She comes from a long line of loggers. Her scientific knowledge has revealed to her that current practices of loggers and their forestry facilitators and their conventional approaches that ignore the importance of connections in the forests between members of the forest communities is not the best.  Hopefully, Simard with her scientific knowledge of forestry and trees, together with the local indigenous people, and their traditional knowledge, that is coming closer together, can teach the British Columbian officials that there is a better way. It is an ancient way practiced by indigenous people in the area for many generations.  It is based on a different attitude to nature that recognizes the importance of the connections in the rainforest between the myriad organisms that live there.

 

Simard’s logging ancestors understood how important logging was to the people who lived there, but they must learn to understand that trees are more than a resource to be exploited. Logging can be a renewable resource, but it requires a respectful attitude to the creatures that occupy the forest ecosystems. Simply seeing forests as a resource is not good enough.

 

Simard learned from an indigenous person named Subiyay who talked of

 

“the trees as people.  Not only with a sort of intelligence—akin to us humans—or even spiritual quality perhaps not unlike ours. Not merely as equivalent to people, with the same bearings.

 

They are people.

The tree people.

           

I don’t presume to grasp Aboriginal knowledge fully. It comes from a way of knowing the earth—an epistemology—different from that of my own culture. It speaks of being attuned to the blooming of the bitterroot, the running of the salmon, the cycles of the moon. Of knowing that we are tied to the land—the trees and animals and soil and water—and to one another, and that we have a responsibility to care for these connections and resources, ensuring sustainability of these ecosystems for future generations and to honor those who came before. Of treading lightly, taking only what gifts we need, and giving back. Of showing humility toward and tolerance for all we are connected too in this circle of life. But what my years in the forestry profession have also shown me is that too many decision-makers dismiss this way of viewing nature and rely only on select parts of science. The impact has become too devastating to ignore. We can compare the condition of the land where it has been torn apart, each resource treated in isolation from the rest, to where it has been cared for according to the Secwepemc principal of k’wseltktnews (translated as “we are all related” or the Salish concept of neca?mat ct (“we are one”).”

 

It was very interesting to me that the scientific knowledge Simard had acquired and the knowledge gained by Indigenous people of the forest through living there for millennia had come to such amazingly similar conclusions—namely that we are all connected.

Connecting Ocean to Continent

Books, Environment, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy, Nature, New Attitude to Nature, Plants

 

The key to the scientific research of Suzanne Simard relates to mycorrhizal fungi which are are beneficial soil fungi that form a symbiotic relationship with over 90% of plant species. That means both get something from the other.  It is a beneficial relationship for both. The fungi ins the soil act as an extension of the root system to improve the forest plant’s nutrient and water uptake. These fungi, or mycorrhizae (“fungus-root”), create underground networks that supply plants with phosphorus and water, while receiving in return carbohydrates (sugars) in return that they are unable to create well. This network is her prime research subject.

 

 

Suzanne Simard’s research is far from over. She continues to try to figure out how forest communities operate. So far, her team’s research has shown that the mycorrhizal fungal communities which they detected underneath the ground in the temperate rainforests of British Columbia differ depending on the number of salmon that were returning to their natal streams. They still don’t know exactly how far into the forest those networks transport salmon that returned to those natal streams, but they do know those networks transport nitrogen from the carcasses of salmon that did return to their natal stream to the surrounding land around those streams.

 

As a result, the team searched for the bones of salmon that had been carried into the forest by bears, wolves, and eagles. The bones were all that were left of those carcasses once these creatures were finished dining on salmon. As Simard, said, in her book Fidning the Motehr Tree, “The bones were all that were left once the flesh was eaten and the residual tissue decayed, nutrients seeping into the forest floor.”

 

They are trying to determine how the restoration of stone traps which the indigenous people were forced to abandon by successive Canadian governments affects the transportation of nitrogen from the ocean to inland. For example they would like to know the extent to which the spawning salmon feed the cedars, birches, and spruces for thousands of miles inland along the shores of those rivers. As a result of research already completed, they know that “Salmon in this way [are] connecting the ocean with the continent

 

Simard acknowledges that indigenous people of the area, including the Secwepemc “knew how vital salmon was to the interior forests, and to their livelihoods and they’d cared for the populations according to far-reaching principles of interconnectedness.” In other words, the indigenous understood as the European colonialists did not, that interconnection was crucial to the health of everything that lived in those coastal temperate rainforests.

 

It was a pity that those colonial powers failed to appreciate that the indigenous people had learned a lot about the land they occupied during their thousands of years of occupation.  Had the colonial powers recognized that and not assumed that the Europeans had superior knowledge, those communities would not have been devastated as they were. This was just one more example of how presumed European superiority was a deadly unfortunate illness that affected everything in the forest. It could have been so much better.

 

This was a fundamental error that has been perpetuated ever since. Hopefully scientists like Suzanne Simard and her fellow researchers will be able to teach the current Canadian forestry authorities that the indigenous people know a thing or two about their forests and they would do well to listen to the wisdom of the people who live there and will not always assume that they know better. The Canadian authorities need a new attitude to nature and that attitude can be obtained from their indigenous partners in the temperate rainforest.

Forest Detectives

Affinity, Books, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy, Nature, New Attitude to Nature, Plants

 

Suzanne Simard worked with students and a postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Teresa “Sm’hayetsk” Ryan of the Tsimshian nation in the Bella Bella region of British Columbia. Teresa was both a traditional basket weaver and fisheries scientist. As an aboriginal person she was keenly interested in whether or not the restoration of fishing practices using stone traps that had been banned in the area by early colonial powers could reinvigorate the salmon fishery that had been devastated after colonial powers assumed jurisdiction over those fisheries more than a century ago. At the same time, she wanted to know if a return to traditional methods of fishing might also reinvigorate the cedars of the regions by augmenting their food supply with carcasses of salmon. This could be beneficial to the forests communities as well as the people that were also part of those communities.

 

In that same inlet scientists from the University of Victoria and Simon Fraser University had discovered nitrogen rings of cedar and Sitka spruce  and in plants , insects, and soils. They had learned that the nitrogen came from the carcasses of salmon from the ocean carried by bears carried to the forest where they ate part of the salmon but not all. Salmon is an incredibly rich food source as bears, eagles, and humans had learned.

 

Each bear, they learned, preying on spawning salmon, transported on average 150 salmon per day into the forest! As a result, “the roots of the trees foraged for the decaying protein and nutrients, the salmon flesh providing more than three-quarters of the tree’s nitrogen needs.” The scientists could analyze the trees and determine from where their nitrogen came. That was one of the reasons Simard said she was a “forest detective.” Simard said, “Scientists could use the year-by-year variation in tree-ring nitrogen to find correlations between salmon populations, and changing climate, deforestation, and shifting fisheries practices. An old cedar tree could hold a thousand-year-record of salmon runs.”

 

In the process of doing this work much to her amazement, Suzanne Simard had to overcome the skepticism of her scientific peers and her own personal shyness and in doing so she became an international scientific star, providing a Ted talk, podcasts, National Geographic film, and reached thousands of people around the world. I first heard her on CBC radio and then read her famous book that became a best-seller. A best-seller about trees can you imagine that. Yet, that was not all, her concept of the Mother Tree made it into the film Avatar where millions of people heard of it.

 

It was amazing what the forest detectives could learn. It would make Crime Scene Investigators look modest. The main thing they learned was that everything in the forests was connected. Nothing was isolated. Connection was everything.

 

The forest detectives provided scientific proof for what indigenous people had known for millennia!

 

Heiltsuk people

Affinity, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy, Natural History, Nature, New Attitude to Nature, Plants

 

There never was a forest that white people did not like to destroy.  Based on our history, this appears to be an obvious truth.  When European settlers arrived in North America, they went about destroying the astounding forests of North America with industrial panache. They were good at destruction.  That was their attitude to nature. Nature was something they had a moral and religious duty to destroy. They declared war on nature.

 

Many of the original inhabitants of North America had a very different attitude to nature. Most of them [though sadly not all of them] did not see nature as something that should be harvested. Primarily they saw nature as their nurturing mother—Mother Nature. And who would kill one’s own mother?

 

One interesting example of this, was the Heiltsuk people on the west coast of Canada. These people are sometimes referred to as Bella Bella, an indigenous nation of the Central coast of British Columbia centred on the island community of Bella Bella. They had thrived there for at least 8,000 years.

 

They built tidal traps along the coastline to harvest salmon passively. They kept careful track of the populations of the salmon and adjusted their harvests when necessary. They did not want to destroy the salmon population on which they depended. They kept the fish that were trapped at low tide, but released the biggest egg bearing female salmon to allow them to travel up the rivers to spawn. They smoked the salmon, or dried them or cooked them while burying the guts and left-overs in the forest floor. They returned the bones of the fish to nourish the forest ecosystem (as did the bears) This practice enhanced the salmon populations and the productivity of the forests, rivers, and estuaries. As Simard said, “The forests, rich with salmon, returned the favor by shading the rivers, shedding nutrients into the waters, and providing habitat for the bears, wolves, and eagles.” This was an example of the indigenous principle of reciprocity that was so important to them, as explained by Robin Wall Kimmerer in her wonderful book Braiding Sweetgrass. Sadly, the colonialists had a different attitude to nature. They did not worry as much about reciprocity. They were more interesting in taking.

 

When the colonialists assumed jurisdiction over these lands, including forests and waters, they were not as wise as the Indigenous people had been. The Indigenous prohibited the use of stone traps.  As a result, the inevitable happened. As Simard explained, “The salmon were overfished within the first two decades and have not yet had time to recover fully.”

 

Of course, in more recent times, thanks to the new white administration, things have got even worse. Climate change and a warming Pacific Ocean, both caused by modern industrial systems have intensified the problems. The number of fish have been reduced to the point of near exhaustion. Fewer and fewer reach the spawning grounds. As Simard, “It’s part of a general pattern of destroying interconnecting habitats.”

 

The same is happening just to the north of the Heiltsuk community. As Simard said, “to the north on Haida Gwaii, the last of the cedars, some more than a thousand years old, are being clear-cut on Graham Island, leaving the forest along the spawning rivers degraded and the Haida wondering what will happen to their way of life.” This led to Simard asking the Big Question: “When will this stop, this unravelling?”

 

Simard’s research also shows the harmful effects of clear-cutting. I have talked to a business man involved in the manufacturing of products made of wood, and he explained to me that it was important for us to remember that forests are a what he called a perpetual resource.  That assumes though that the best forestry practices are followed and clear cutting is not one of those. As Simard has shown, trees like communities and benefit greatly in many ways from the old Mother Trees that ground them.

 

Isolation Bad; Connection Good

Affinity, Books, Nature, New Attitude to Nature, Plants

 

Suzanne Simard’s research proved that contrary to conventional forestry protocols, Douglas fir seedlings tended to perform better if they were linked to a healthy unrelated Douglas-fir mother tree than if they were isolated. Forestry practice had assumed that surrounding trees should be removed as they would be competitors for the Douglas-fir. However, seedlings that were kin to the Douglas-fir Mother Tree did even better. This suggested strongly that Douglas-fir Mother Trees could recognize their own kin. As she said, “health depends on the ability to connect and communicate.” The worst thing that can be done for trees is to clear cut! Of course, humans are similar. Humans flourish when they are connected to others.

 

When Simard was a rookie forester, she had been mocked for resisting clear cutting, but later her research proved that clear cutting was the worst thing they could do. Trees thrived in a forest community. Again, like people, trees thrive in a community. “The forest is an integrated whole,” she said. Once more, just like people who are part of the world around them, so it was with trees.

 

Simard in fact paid particular attention to the community under the ground where there was a multitude of silky fungal threads that fanned through the soil delivering moisture, or nutrients, or even messages from older big trees to younger ones that needed help. It sounds incredible, but her science proves it. She started off with questions and ended up with answers:

 

“Were those threads, which looked like an underground spider’s web, joining trees and plants together to capture much needed moisture for the whole community? …Maybe they had nothing to do with it, since the prevailing wisdom was that trees only compete with one another to survive. That’s what forestry school had taught me, and it was why my logging company liked fast-growing trees spaced well apart in rows. But that didn’t make sense in this ecosystem where trees and plants seemed to need one another for survival. One extremely dry season, a profound dryness the trees were not adapted to cope with, and they could succumb to the blistering heat.”

 

Trees like people thrived in communities.

 

Traditional western science had always assumed that there was in huge chasm between the human world and the plant and animal worlds. Humans have intelligence, animals have instincts, and plants have neither.

Maybe plants and animals are much more alike than we thought.

More recent science, like that of Suzanne Simard is casting doubt on the traditional science and forestry. Nature is a lot different than we think. Maybe we got it all wrong. Maybe we need a new attitude to nature.