At the centre of this forest ecosystem, Suzanne Simard found, mother trees. As she said,

“When the Mother Trees—the majestic hubs at the center of forest communication, protection, and sentience—die, they pass their wisdom  to their kin, generation after generation, sharing the knowledge of what helps  and what harms, who is friend or foe, and how to adapt and survive in an ever-changing landscape. It’s what parents do.”

Simard reached this conclusion from her scientific research:

After a lifetime as a forest detective, my perception of the woods has been turned upside down. With each new revelation, I am more deeply embedded in the forest. The scientific evidence is impossible to ignore: the forest is wired for wisdom, sentience, and healing. This is not a book about how we can save the trees. This is a book about how the trees can might save us.

Simard said she learned a lot about forestry from her grandfather. He

“reaped harvests while leaving the forest vibrant and regenerative, the mothers intact.  He was never wealthy, but he lived in rich peacefulness with the forest,[I love that expression], taking only what he needed, leaving gaps, so the trees could come back.  How to protect the forest while it provided us with wood to build our homes, fibers to make our paper, and medicines to cure our ailments. I wanted to be a new breed of silviculturist who honored this responsibility.”

This is all part of the wisdom of the forest. Not just intercommunication between trees, but intercommunication with people too. Mutualism is the wisdom of the forest. We learn to live together.  We people need the same thing—i.e. a good constitution so that even people who don’t like each other can live together in peace. Not perfect peace, but peace nonetheless.