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.