Finding the Mother Tree Audiobook By Suzanne Simard cover art

Finding the Mother Tree

Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

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Finding the Mother Tree

By: Suzanne Simard
Narrated by: Suzanne Simard
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About this listen

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the world's leading forest ecologist who forever changed how people view trees and their connections to one another and to other living things in the forest—a moving, deeply personal journey of discovery

Finding the Mother Tree reminds us that the world is a web of stories, connecting us to one another. [The book] carries the stories of trees, fungi, soil and bears—and of a human being listening in on the conversation. The interplay of personal narrative, scientific insights and the amazing revelations about the life of the forest make a compelling story.”—Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass

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

In this, her first book, now available in audio, 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 behaviors, recognize neighbors, compete and cooperate with one another with sophistication, characteristics ascribed to human intelligence, traits that are the essence of civil societies—and at the center 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 into a logging world in the rainforests of British Columbia, of her days as a child spent cataloging 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 own journey, making us understand how deeply human scientific inquiry exists beyond data and technology, that it is about understanding who we are and our place in the world.

©2021 Suzanne Simard (P)2021 Random House Audio
Botany & Plants Environment Philosophy Science & Technology Thought-Provoking Inspiring Suspenseful Forest Wisdom

Critic reviews

*WINNER of the 2021 Banff Mountain Book Prize in Mountain Environment and Natural History*

*WINNER of the National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature*

*WINNER of the 2022 BC and Yukon Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award*

*SHORTLISTED for the 2022 BC and Yukon Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Book Prize*

*SHORTLISTED for the 2021 Science Writers and Communicators of Canada Book Award*

*FINALIST for the 2023 SCWES Book Awards*

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER

One of:

Vogue's "13 Books to Help You Reconnect with Nature"

Electric Lit’s “7 Books by Women Writers About Humanity’s Relationship to Trees”

“Simard has spent decades with her hands in the soil, designing experiments and piecing together the remarkable mysteries of forest ecology . . . elegantly detailed . . . deeply personal . . . A testament to Simard’s skill as a science communicator. Her research is clearly defined, the steps of her experiments articulated, her astonishing results explained and the implications laid bare: We ignore the complexity of forests at our peril.”The New York Times

“Simard’s memoir describes the intersecting webs of her career and private life that brought her to rewrite not only the forestry canon but our understanding of nature itself. She is an intellectual force whose powerful ideas overshadow her name . . . Like Charles Darwin’s findings, Simard’s results are so revolutionary and controversial that they have quickly worked their way into social theory, urban planning, culture and art. Simard’s work knocked 19th-century notions of inevitable competition off their pedestals. If a forest is a commons where the fate of the weakest is tied to that of the strongest, then we have a lot of rethinking to do.”The Washington Post

“[Simard] shares the wisdom of a life of listening to the forest . . . a scientific memoir as gripping as any HBO drama series.”The Observer

What listeners say about Finding the Mother Tree

Highly rated for:

Compelling Personal Story Engaging Life Story Authentic Voice Heartfelt Memoir Inspiring Autobiographical Tale
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Amazing Forests

I listened to Suzanne Sumatra on Science Friday and knew I would love the book. It was even better than I expected. I grew up in Coeur d Alene Idaho having fond memories of the forest, trees and lakes.

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Inspiring & Moving Scientific Memoir

Suzanne Simard has a gentle voice that makes it easy to listen to her wise, vital story.

She comes from a family of loggers. Her soft and non-confrontational style makes it all the more amazing and inspiring that slowly, over decades, she has gotten some, if not many, of her adversaries to listen and change.

Her scientific work has altered the way loggers, scientists, and the general public understand the importance of Trees.

Simard’s growing body of scientific research has proven that trees do communicate with each other. These silent but powerful messages that trees convey underground between their roots and mycorrhizal networks fuels their thriving, healing, growing, & protecting each other.

Diversity of Ecology is key to healthy thriving forests which we all need to clean our air & water and heal our damaged earth.

She explains all this clearly for the average non-scientist and yet also specifies exactly what she did in each experiment for those who want to replicate them.

After she became a mother and survived and healed from the trauma of cancer herself (possibly caused by toxic chemicals used in her early experiments) she explored the new idea of a Mother Tree and geared her research towards that — discovering the amazing fact that seedlings fed by their Douglas Fir Mother trees thrive better than fir seedlings next to other random Douglas Firs.

These insights and new knowledge provide so many powerful opportunities to deeper understand how the silent creatures of our world - Trees, animals and other beings - are way more than just sentient beings, but are actually wise and far more sophisticated than we ever cared to know.

Humans do great harm daily.

The destruction we have wrought from ignorance, selfishness, and greed has come full circle. We are all far more connected than we knew.

Earth is protesting
with all the impact of climate change.

We ignore this important message at our own peril.

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A life’s work that’ll change the world for all species.

get a cup of tea, light a candle or a fire and listen to a friend share her world changing life story. It will
Open your mind, Enlighten your understanding, deepen your curiosity, awaken your awareness and teach you things you never knew there was to learn . Finish your tea and go plant a garden.

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Amazing Book!

Love this book. Incredibly compelling story of science confirming what people that live in connection with nature already know: it's deeply connected.

Usually find author as narrator not so good but Simard is awesome! Really draws you in and makes the story so personal.

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Wonderful

Loved ever minute of it, especially that it was read by the actual author of the book.

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a deep reach into the forest

Scientifically tedious at times,but well worth the listen. We all know forests live cooperatively.

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I wanna read it again!

This book is amazing. I would love to learn more and keep following these experiments. Thanks for documenting your efforts in such an approachable way. I love trees and all the insights presented here are super interesting!

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Beautiful

The most lovely, hopeful book re: forest ecology and the opportunity to subvert climate change.

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Understanding the interconnectedness of nature.

A must read for all of us that love trees and all that mother nature gives us, the interconnectedness of life.

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Great information

This is very informative and everyone should be aware of what we are doing to our planet

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