Dr. Suzanne Simard
Autor(a) de Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest
About the Author
Obras por Dr. Suzanne Simard
Intelligent Trees 3 exemplares
Associated Works
Etiquetado
Conhecimento Comum
- Outros nomes
- Simard, S. W.
- Data de nascimento
- 20th century
- Sexo
- female
- Nacionalidade
- Canada
- Local de nascimento
- British Columbia, Canada
- Educação
- University of British Columbia
Oregon State University (PhD) - Ocupações
- scientist
professor - Organizações
- University of British Columbia
Membros
Críticas
Listas
Prémios
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Estatísticas
- Obras
- 3
- Also by
- 1
- Membros
- 770
- Popularidade
- #33,051
- Avaliação
- 4.0
- Críticas
- 25
- ISBN
- 20
- Línguas
- 4
They share an unceasing curiosity and respect for the living world. They sacrificed a lot to become scientists. They experienced the loneliness and frustrations of being female scientists, and they made significant contributions to knowledge, although Simard’s discoveries may ultimately prove to be much, much bigger.
Simard’s scientific revelations include an understanding the role fungi root networks play in helping trees share nutrients under stressful conditions.
Foresters assumed that if you clearcut a forest it can be regenerated well enough by replanting new trees in their stead.
Simard showed why kindred species in forests — like the alder or birch in fir stands — should be left alone. Because trees cooperate even as they compete for light, water, and nutrients.
While Simard’s book is packed with elegant descriptions of the forests and mountain ranges she studies, in “Lab Girl” I think Jahren more keenly assays the mental landscape and why it is so hard to make a difference.
And Jahren is funny where Simard is sober, well, most of the time.
In this book in addition to her science Simard shares her personal evolution as a woman, mother, and to a minor degree as a lover.
Her youth was stained by the volatile marriage of her parents and their ultimate divorce. Her own marriage goes off the rails when her academic ambitions and her husband’s preference to live in the backwoods clash.
In this telling her personal enlightenment is gruesomely hijacked by a painful and frightening bout of breast cancer, culminating in surgery and chemotherapy.
As in her childhood, during this period the forests and to a lesser extent her lab help restore her balance. She loses her brother to a terrible farm accident before she has a chance to reconcile with him after a drunken argument. But nothing prepares her for the disorientation that accompanies the cancer treatments.
I have a few complaints with the book.
Simard sets up a parallels between her own suffering and the plunder of the beautiful BC forests, between the role “mother trees” and the mothering role in her life, and between the sacredness of nature’s family and the family she misses from her childhood. Her children are like her little sprouts.
Can’t fathers be nurturing, too?
I can certainly identify with the sense of loss as we grow older and our families fragment.
She also lets herself be consumed by nostalgia for the good old days when the forests were managed by First Nations. Contemporary paleontology shows that hunter-gatherers were terraformers, too, if not quite as dramatic as our civilization turned out to be.
Simard gives long and lavish descriptions of her forest haunts. Sometimes I wished she’d cool it with the adjectives. I’ve been to forests, too. And sometimes they are just plain monotonous.
The sidebars give this story a messianic and melodramatic tinge. I find the science and the trail of discovery plenty exciting enough.
And I should thank both Simard and Jahren for insisting that I focus more closely on the micro aspects of nature. It is more beautiful and complex than imaginable.… (mais)