This week, we feature a conversation with renowned ecologist Dr. Suzanne Simard, who invites us into the mysterious world of forests.
Exploring the intricate ways trees are connected in community, Dr Simard’s groundbreaking work on forest ecology offers a window into how trees communicate with each other through underground fungal networks—a theory she termed the “wood-wide web” in 1997. Rejecting the idea that trees are merely individuals competing for resources, Susan’s work awoke the possibility that a forest could be familial, sentient, and deeply alive.
She shares her latest studies into Mother trees and how they protect the trees around them, and asks us to consider how a kinship with the living world—like the one between trees and their ecosystem––can help heal our separation from Earth.
