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of trees. Simard explains that trees are
“linked by a system of underground chan-
nels” that create a “forest society,” and
among the mind-blowing discoveries
she’s made is that older trees are able to
identify which saplings they’re related to,
and that they nurture younger trees.
These conclusions stem from her work on
“mycorrhizal networks,” or fungal threads
that grow between cells of plant roots, and
a “Mother Tree” that uses such a system to
transfer nutrients to kin saplings. Such
revelations, she argues, make for more
than just a series of oddities: it should be
motivation to reform forest management
in a way that benefits humans as well as
trees. She explains the resistance her theo-
ries encountered after her initial article
on tree intelligence made her a minor
scientific celebrity, and grounds her own
journey of scientific discovery in seminal
life events: after discovering in the lab
that birch and fir trees communicate, for
example, she received a call that a sibling
she’d been estranged from had died: “The
funeral was held in agonizing cold. The
aspens were bare, the firs nestled beneath
their dendritic crowns drooping in snow.”
As moving as it is educational, this
groundbreaking work entrances. (May)
How Iceland Changed the World:
The Big History of a Small Island
Egill Bjarnason. Penguin, $17 trade paper
(288p) ISBN 978-0-14-313588-3
Journalist Bjarnason debuts with an
insightful and fawning history of his
native Iceland. He begins with the
island’s discovery by Vikings 1,200
years ago, and delves into the Icelandic
sagas to recount how explorer Gudrid
Thorbjarnardóttir succeeded on her third
attempt to reach North America, where
she gave birth to the first European
American. Though Iceland boasts the
“world’s oldest surviving parliament,”
in the 1200s Norway took advantage of
a period of civil conflict to seize control
of the island, and a succession of
Scandinavian rulers held power until
- Despite the country’s lack of
political independence, however, events
in Iceland influenced the world far
beyond its borders. Bjarnason notes that
the eruption of an Icelandic volcano in
1783 had such an enormous impact on
global food production that some histo-
What’s surprised you the most about
how your life has turned out?
I was just a nobody kid. I was so shy
and introverted, I was cast as the cat
in a school play because it had no
words to say. I could barely speak. I
had to grow up and become a whole
person, so to look at where I am now
versus that kid is shocking. There was
no expectation, even on my part, that
I would do anything
of importance. I also
didn’t realize how
important spending
so much time in the
forest would be to
my work as a scien-
tist. I would never
have asked the ques-
tions I asked if I
hadn’t had that
background.What stands out to
you as the most
amazing thing you
found in your
research?
When I first made
the discovery that plants were con-
necting and sending resources back
and forth. I remember being in the
lab and analyzing the data, and these
patterns just popped out at me. The
more that a tree was shaded, the
more carbon went over to the shaded
tree from a tree that wasn’t—that’s
when I realized that our whole idea
about competition, this neo-Dar-
winian view of nature as this combat
zone, I knew it was wrong. That was
a huge moment.How did that find compare with what
you’d been taught about competition
in the forest?
When I started out working as a for-
ester, that’s not how I was taught. In
university, that’s not how I was
taught forestry was practiced.
Instead, it was that the trees were all
separate and competing—just indi-
viduals trying to be the best and the
most dominant.Does your
research have
implications for
other branches of
science?
I’ve had people
come to talk to
me from all
kinds of disci-
plines, because
they see similar
connections in
their fields.
Cancer researchers
are super inter-
ested in my work;
I went to speak
to a group of them who were looking
at cell-to-cell communication, cancer
cells to healthy cells, who wanted to
know how that might relate to how
a fungus communicates with a plant
cell. People are seeing these
parallels —not just medical
researchers, but also in fields like
architecture. These findings I’ve made
have captured people’s imaginations,
and they’re seeing the transdisciplinary
parts of it.
—Lenny Picker[Q&A]
PW Talks with Suzanne Simard
There’s No ‘I’ in Tree
In Finding the Mother Tree (Knopf, May; reviewed on p. 42), forest
ecology professor Simard shares her life story and her revolutionary
discoveries about plant communication.©^
brendan
ko