Finding the Mother Tree (rebroadcast)

Speaker 1 00:00:01 The views and opinions expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of natural bridges, media, or Ks QDS staff, volunteers, or underwriters, Speaker 2 00:00:10 Ks QD. Thanks, sustainable systems research foundation for supporting sustainability. Now SS R F provides education, research and advocacy for regional environmental quality and sustainability related problems and solutions for information, visit sustainable systems, foundation.org. And thank you. SS RF for supporting community radio K squid 90.7 FM Speaker 3 00:00:40 KSQ QD. Thanks environmental innovations for supporting sustainability. Now B Corp certified woman owned environmental innovations helps businesses, nonprofits, and schools with free resources and cash incentives from the Monterey bay area green business program. More information is [email protected]. Thank you. Environmental innovations for supporting community radio. K squid 90.7 FM. Speaker 0 00:01:31 Good evening case. Good listeners. It's every other Sunday. Again, I'm Ronnie Lipshitz and you're listening to sustainability now a biweekly case. Good radio show focused on environment sustainability and social justice in the Monterey bay region, California and the world. My guest today is Dr. Suzanne Samar, professor of forestry and conservation sciences at the university of British Columbia. And we're gonna be talking about the social life of trees, her new book, finding the mother tree discovering the wisdom of the forest has just been published. Uh, professor smart. Are you there? Speaker 5 00:02:06 I am. Okay. How are you Speaker 0 00:02:07 Tonight? I'm pretty good. Um, how about you? Speaker 5 00:02:11 I'm good. Thank you. Sitting here in British Columbia. Speaker 0 00:02:14 <laugh> I hope it's, uh, it's a beautiful day out up there. Um, yeah, professor smart is doing a free online presentation tomorrow evening at 7:00 PM for bookshop Santa Cruz. And I decided I wanna read the blurb that appears on the bookshop's website. And, and this is the quote, Suzanne Samar is a pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence. She's been compared to Rachel Carson hailed as a scientist who conveys complex technical ideas in a way that's dazzling and profound Samar writes in inspiring, illuminating and accessible ways. How trees living side by side for hundreds of years have evolved how they perceive one another learn and adapt their behaviors, recognize neighbors. And remember the past how they have agency about the future illicit warnings and Mount defenses 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. Speaker 0 00:03:17 Uh, that is a, a fairly, uh, interesting quote. I don't know what else to call it, and I wanna welcome you to sustainability be now. And thank you for being my guest. Um, I having said that I wanna recommend your book as a fantastic read and memoir. And what I wanna focus on tonight is mostly the science and the implications of your research and some of the debates over forest networking and networks. And I just wanna note, of course, we are pretty committed to our Redwood forest here in Santa Cruz. Not quite the same as yours. Um, even though they're mostly second growth. So maybe as a start, you could describe, you know, the basis, uh, what, what your research is basically, and, and, um, uh, the whole idea of how trees relate to each other and communicate with each other. Speaker 5 00:04:08 Yeah, well, um, you know, we used to think that trees, uh, were just solitary individuals that, you know, fought their way through the world by competing for resources, but my work over the years, as well as other people's work, um, show that, um, that trees are really, they're very social, that they, they live in communities and they're actually connected together below ground through this amazing fungal web. And they communicate through this fungal web. They, they also communicate above ground, um, by sending signals through the air. And so they have, they have many ways of, uh, of communicating with each other, which serves them well because, because they do live beside each other for hundreds of years and, um, and they need to sort of know who their neighbors are and how to negotiate with them and how to, um, you know, perceive each other and, um, yeah, just learn how to live together. And so they have, yeah, they've evolved many ways to communicate through these, um, various ways above ground and below ground. Speaker 0 00:05:14 Well, in your book, you describe, you know, the, the process whereby you, you discovered this the whole, the whole sort of Matic network that, uh, underpins trees. Maybe you could say something about that, about the, you know, the discovery. I know it's a long story. Um, but Speaker 5 00:05:32 <laugh> yeah, no, no problems. Um, yeah, so, you know, all trees all over the world, including redwoods, um, they form relationships with, uh, fungi, um, and there's various groups of fungi, but this particular group is, uh, is a mutualistic fungus. That means that they, they help the trees and in turn the trees help them. And the way they do this is that the fungi, um, take photosynthetic carbon from the trees, which they use for energy in order to grow these fungal networks through the soil. And those fungal networks serve to pick up nutrients and water from the soil and bring them back to the tree in exchange for this Photosynth aid. And it turns out that a good portion of these fungi are what we call generalists. That means that they, they can actually associate with many different species of plants and trees and farm networks with, um, and linked together and form networks with other trees of other species and within a species like the redwoods, for example, you know, they farm what's called an, our S microrisal fungi network. And those redwoods would be linked together by this fungal network and through the network. Um, these trees exchange all kinds of, uh, information and resources and, um, resources being like water and carbon and nitrogen and phosphorus and information like whether or not there's stressed out or whether they're shaded or, or whether something might be attacking them, or whether they're in danger, they actually communicate this kind of information back and forth between each other. And this actually helps them survive and live, uh, these social lives. Speaker 0 00:07:11 What, what, what, you know, so, so there must be some evolutionary advantage to all of this. I mean, I presume that that, that there is there, but how, how did this happen? You know, what's the, you know, the, the symbiosis between the fungi and the trees. I mean, do you have any ideas about, uh, you know, the origins of this relationship? Speaker 5 00:07:33 Yeah, actually, um, you know, there's lots of fossil records and that this is very well documented that, that the migration of, of, uh, plants onto land from the ocean onto land required, that the, that the, that the plants actually formed this symbiosis in order for the plants to get the nutrients from this hostile environment, that was basically a lot of rock and very, um, you know, a very hostile kind of, uh, environment. Um, and the fungi, you know, grew out of the, sort of out of these sort of oceanic plants and migrated onto these rocks and sort of dissolved the nutrients out of the rocks and brought them back to these plants. And that helped them evolve from being very simple organ organisms into, you know, you carry cells basically. And, and then later higher level plants and eventually trees. And, um, and so that actually allowed sort of synthesis to start take, you know, dominating our earth, our terrestrial ecosystems, and what photosynthesis through the uptake of carbon dioxide. You know, there's also an emission of oxygen and that led to oxygenation of our environment, which also of course, led to the evolution of, of animals and, um, and eventually human beings. Speaker 0 00:08:51 Uh, is it, I mean, is it fair to assume that the, the fungi colonized land first or was it, was it simultaneous and, you know, because, uh, that seems like a real coincidence there. If they, they came up on land at the same time, Speaker 5 00:09:09 Y you know, from what I understand, um, from, and I'm not an evolutionary biologist, I'm an oncologist, but from what I understand, these things did, um, you know, the, the, the fossil records do show the first land has these microrisal, Symbio already in place already. Speaker 0 00:09:25 So you Speaker 5 00:09:26 Can see the AR SCUs in the roots of the, of the, of these fossilized plants. And so the thinking is that, you know, about 450 million years ago, that, that the symbiosis was actually essential to the migration of, onto of plants onto land. So I think it did happen around the same time, but, you know, that could have been over a long period of time. Speaker 0 00:09:47 Yeah, of course, of course. And, and we can't go back, at least we can't go back yet to see how that, that all happened. Um, you also write in the book about how, uh, well, why don't you tell us about mother trees and then, and then we can talk about children, trees. <laugh> Speaker 5 00:10:04 Okay. <laugh> yeah. So, um, you know, this, we kind of, I guess, in, in Europe, around the late 18 hundreds, um, there were researchers who had been studying, you know, people have studied fungi for a long time and eaten fungi, and it's been a part of our diets. And, um, but, but the idea that these mutualisms formed between plants and fungi really wasn't fully understood until the late 18 hundreds, when there was a scientist called his name was Fran, um, discovered these Symbio, I think he was a German for, uh, researcher. And, um, and since then, you know, we've, we've come to understand them as you know, absolutely essential to the, to the survival and fitness of the plants. And then eventually over time, you know, as the understanding increase, there were some researchers in the kingdom, mostly David Reed, who is, who is an emeritus professor at Sheffield now at university of Sheffield. Speaker 5 00:11:02 Um, he did some early experiments where, um, you know, following the work in observations of many people who had these hunches, that, you know, in forest that fungi were, you know, in important to the growth of trees and, and that they've formed, you know, fairy rings around pine trees was a, an early clue mm-hmm <affirmative>. Um, and there was even one study in a forest that where somebody took some labeled or carbon 14 and labeled these trees and found, you know, at distance carbon 14, showing up in these plants around these pine trees and David Reid took that idea and he tested it in the lab that, that pine trees could be connected together by a microrisal fungus. And he grew these Pines, um, in a root box in the lab, and he colonized them with a fungus, a microrisal fungus, and he labeled one of the seeds with carbon 14 and saw that it moved to its neighbor. Speaker 5 00:11:56 And he used, you know, photographic film to sort of take a picture of this. And it was quite an amazing discovery. It was published in nature in the early 1980s. And then, um, I came along later in, did, did my PhD in the early 1990s. And I was wondering, you know, could these connections actually occur in real forests? <laugh> in forests in north America. And I studied the forest in British Columbia, and I discovered that yes, these networks do exist in forests and that they transmit carbon just like David had shown in his lab study. And eventually, you know, this research area became really controversial. It's a long, long story, but eventually, you know, one of the problems was that people didn't really, you know, couldn't see these fungal networks. They, they didn't really believe even researchers. You know, it was hard to believe that they existed, that trees would be connected and sharing resources below ground. Speaker 5 00:12:49 And so we set out my graduate students and I set out to map what that network would look like in a forest. And we used molecular DNA techniques to actually map where all the trees were and all the fungal connections of one species of fun of fungus Ariso Pogon, which is a truffle forming fungus mm-hmm <affirmative>. And we map this network and we found that the most highly connected trees were the biggest oldest trees. And then we did a bunch of experiments. And when I say highly connected, that means they're connected to all the other trees around them. And they were connected to more trees than the smaller trees were connected to other trees. And the reason is they just have bigger root systems. They've got bigger canopies. And so they are transmitting a lot of carbon and energy below ground to feed this network. And it turns out they not only feed the network to grow a network, but they actually, some of that carbon and nutrients ends up in seedlings that grow around these old trees. And, and through many, many experiments, we figured out that, that these trees actually nurture their seedlings, not only, you know, seedlings, um, of the same species, but that they could recognize their own, their own seedlings, their kin and share nutrients with them. And so that's why, what led us to call these hub trees, these central trees, these big old trees, mother trees, mm-hmm Speaker 0 00:14:10 <affirmative>. And, um, what, what's the relationship then to, to the, you know, to seedlings, to young trees, how do, how do the mother trees relate to those? Speaker 5 00:14:22 Well? So when a, when the seeds, you know, when the seed of a, an old tree, the cone open, the seed falls to the forest floor, the seed germinates, and it takes about a a month or two or a few months, in some cases for those little roots in the soil, those radicals to become colonized by the network of the old trees that are already there. So they're already existing, this vast microrisal network, like a huge internet below ground. Yeah. And so these little seedlings tap into that network, and they basically benefit from the resource uptake of this network already. So it's already going, it's already, you know, associated with the big old trees and the little seedlings they tap into it and they benefit from it. But they also, the old trees also transmit some of their carbon and nutrients and water directly into those little seedlings. And so the seedlings are able to get a head start. Um, and if they're in the shade, they're able to overcome their photosynthetic deficits, which they have early on when they don't have very many needles and that gets them going mm-hmm <affirmative> and then they established and eventually become trees themselves. Speaker 0 00:15:32 Org, we need to take a short break. So, uh, let's go ahead and do this. You're listening to Ks QD, 90.7 FM on your radio dial and K qd.org streaming on the internet. Well, you're listening to sustainability now. This is Ronnie Lipshitz. And my guest tonight is professor Suzanne, Sam, uh, professor of forestry and conservation sciences at the university of British Columbia, uh, and her new book, finding the mother tree discovering the wisdom of the forest has just been published. And we it's just been talking about, about her research. Um, and I want to actually now shift to some of the, oh, I don't know some of the sci, uh, you know, philosophy of science questions that, that are, that you raise in the book. And in, in particular, uh, you talk about the reductionism of, you know, biological science and the implications of that reductionism for forests and forestry. Speaker 0 00:16:34 Um, and, uh, you know, I, one sort of expects that the collective consciousness of, of a scientific discipline would change right as research findings sort of shift. I mean, this is, this is the whole argument about the, you know, Thomas Koon's, uh, thing about scientific revolutions. Um, but you, you account of your struggles with the free to go policy in British Columbia seem to suggest that that clear cutting and plantation planting still rules now, is that correct? Uh, do you find that the sort of discourse, I guess, of forestry is changing towards a, kind of a more holistic, um, perspective approach? Speaker 5 00:17:18 You know, it's, it's been a, a Rocky road, I would say it's been back and forth and back and forth, but generally, um, we are still clear cutting and planting with a few exceptions, um, and that sort of paradigm, or that standard, I'll call it a standard operating practice. Um, really hearkens back to the 1970s and the 1980s. Um, it's economically, you know, expedient to, to do that. It's cheap to clear cut. Um, it's easy to plant those plantations and, and a lot of money is made. Um, and, and especially, you know, going after big old trees is very lucrative. And so, you know, those are the first things that we lose and in clear, cutting, you get not just the big old trees, but also all the other trees. And so, yeah, there's a lot of money to be made and it's being made very, very handover fist. Speaker 5 00:18:13 Um, and has it changed well, you know, that paradigm really grew out of the agricultural model and, and the agricultural model of production, um, forestry, or which is, you know, plant fast growing trees and grow them quickly, weed them. And then you can cut them down in short order in, in a few decades, um, that really grew out of, you know, I ideas of evolution that was about natural selection and competition brain Supreme mm-hmm <affirmative>, um, and was applied to ecology and then applied to forestry and, you know, and that's taken hold and that's really the dominant paradigm or the dominant method that, of how we manage forest now. And it hasn't changed very much. And, and to be honest, we're down to our last 3% of old growth, our big, iconic, old growth force. We only have 3% left because basically, you know, the, we have gone from a province of old girls forest when I was, you know, in a kid in the sixties to a province of clear cuts and, you know, I, it, it's heartbreaking to see, um, but you know, at the same time, you know, we we'd still need to keep fighting to, to save what we have and change forest practices so that we, you know, honor these connections better and, you know, we can make shifts, we can improve things. Speaker 5 00:19:35 And, and yeah, so there's, there is a push to change, but change is slow. Speaker 0 00:19:40 Well, you know, my, my understanding is that the, uh, the American sort of approach to plantation forests comes from Germany that, that this was, uh, something that was instituted in Germany in the 19th century. Um, although I may be incorrect about that, but, um, the other thing, interesting thing of course, is that the competitive notion, uh, of evolution, uh, is, is ascribed to the sort of, uh, free markets of Victorian times when Charles Darwin was writing his books. That that was the model, a social model that he adopted. Right. And as compared to prince Krakin, who talked about mutualism amongst species. Um, and so it's sort of interesting, uh, that what you're, you know, you're talking about goes back to that idea of, of mutualism, but it it's very much against the sort of philosophical trend of, of contemporary society. Um, and so, uh, this, this, um, what, and, and, you know, the, the idea that, that the science will change people's minds about and, and their practices and their research, which seems like such a, a no brainer turns out not to be the case, because institutions are so powerful that even though yeah, right, that, that there are all of these economic forces that keep pushing in the direction of plantation forestry, uh, because of the economic return, um, mm-hmm, <affirmative> supposed economic return and, and that's kind of gets to this whole question about the, the resemblance between tree society and human society. Speaker 0 00:21:24 Um, and do you have any to begin with, do you have any thoughts about that? Speaker 5 00:21:30 Well, that, that was a, a lot of, um, a lot of concepts that you just talked about. Speaker 0 00:21:34 Yeah, I do that. I'm sorry. Speaker 5 00:21:37 That's no, that's okay. I mean, it's, it's fascinating really. And, um, let me just start about the part about, you know, the adoption of German forestry techniques, you know, there, it, it wasn't necessarily that German forestry was bad. It was actually, you know, pretty darn good forestry, the, you know, the difference, one of the main differences in Germany, you know, there would be family units that would like have jurisdiction over whole valleys and, and they would manage their forest based on local knowledge. Yeah. And they would develop their own what we call civil culture systems, which is how do you the forest, how do you regrow the forest based on those local conditions? And, and so, you know, maybe selection harvesting with good in one area or patch cutting with good in another. Um, but they, you know, it was through trial and error that they developed these techniques that worked on these small family based units. Speaker 5 00:22:35 And, and when north America was basically, um, settled, you know, colonized by Europeans, um, and, and basically moved across from the east coast of, of north America to the west coast, cutting trees. I mean, part of there, there's a whole social aspect to that of fear of forest, I guess. Right. And also just making way for these settlers and, and basically, you know, cutting down the forest from the east to the west, but modern forestry really did kind of adopt sort of when, from very narrow aspects of German forestry and, you know, and really it was, it was driven mostly by economics rather than, you know, how German forests were managed, which was based on, you know, local conditions instead, it was, um, you know, let's gonna, we're going use, you know, they're most expedient cost effective way to cut for us, which is clear cutting, and it, and basically kind of ignoring local conditions. Speaker 5 00:23:36 And, um, and, and really, if you look across the west coast, for example, of north America, which is Canada, United States equally, and, um, you know, there's a huge variety of forest pipes from Cal Northern California, all the way up to Alaska. We have huge mountain ranges, we've got dry forest, we have wet forest, we have mountain forest, we have coastal forest. And yet what is the method that we use clear cutting. And there's so much variety and species diversity that we have a lot of choices, but we don't use them. Um, and it's because, you know, in the process of sort of parceling out this, these forests to make money, you know, we kind of get into this sort of, um, you know, it's, it becomes like a self reinforcing loop, right, where, right, sure. You get an infrastructure in place to, you know, where you've got, you know, companies that are, have licenses. And then they start, you know, they get machinery and then they get, you know, contractors and they get, they clear cut, and then there's planting industry get, gets into place. And then the herbicide industry, Monsanto, you know, gets very digs in there. Speaker 0 00:24:46 We need to take a short break. So, uh, let's go ahead and do this. You're listening to Ks QD, 90.7 FM on your radio dial and Ks qd.org streaming on the internet. This is, uh, sustainability. Now I'm talking with professor Suzanne Samar of the university of British Columbia. We've just been talking about, let's see, uh, German, uh, forestry. And the, the fact that vast forestries across north America are basically managed from a single perspective, whereas the variety amongst forest and terrains and, uh, you know, ecosystems are so great that really, you need to have much more local knowledge to, uh, to force them to, to harvest them sustainable sustainably. Is that a fair summary? Speaker 5 00:25:38 Yes, yes it is. And I, I think that, you know, as we move forward and, and find more sustainable ways to manage our forest, it really is going to be about knowing our forest, knowing our local forest, knowing all the variability associated with them, the plants, the, the animals, the trees, and, you know, and understanding how they all interact and then, you know, making intelligent choices about how, how to harvest these trees. And, and generally, you know, I would say the approach that we're taking of clear cutting is probably gonna be like one of the least desirable ways to go the clear cut harvesting. That is the most common enough that it's so easy. Right, right. It's so easy. And, and you make so much money and, um, and leaving, but leaving some trees behind, especially the big old mother trees is so valuable because, you know, they have genes that have been, you know, the DNA in, in their, uh, in their cells have been through many climatic changes for, for example. And that variability in their genetics due to climate variation is essential for us to, for trees to be able to survive and cope with changing climates in the future. And so, you know, by selectively, always taking out those big old trees, clear cutting them, we're really, you know, short circuiting, our ecosystems as well as ourselves, because, you know, we re we need those. We need that seed. We need those genes in order to adapt and, and survive as climate changes in the future. Speaker 0 00:27:11 Yeah. When, and in your book, you write about, uh, the, that with plantation forestry, the trees don't have those R Omatic networks to support each other. And, and often languish, is that, is that the case? Did I get that right? Speaker 5 00:27:27 It's, it's partly right. It, it, they, they do have rise. They're called microrisal network. Yeah. So they, these young plant planted trees. So, you know, when they get started, they'll have a few species of these microrisal fungi associated with them. And there's species that are kind of like weeds. They're kind of like dandy lines where they, they grow quickly. They don't need a lot of energy to grow. And they're ubiquitous, mm-hmm <affirmative> whereas in an old growth forest, like a, like a several century old forest, the fungal diversity is really, really high instead of like maybe five species of fungi that you would find in a, in a new plantation, there would be hundreds, if not thousands of species. And each one of those fungal species has a niche. They do special things. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so as a, as a forest grows big and old and takes up a lot of carbon. Speaker 5 00:28:20 It also needs a lot of nutrients from the soil. And those nutrients are bound in all kinds of little soil pores. And they're bound with minerals, they're, they're in organic compounds. And so the, the Fu those trees need all this diversity of fungi to get out all the nutrients that needs in order to grow big and tall, to become a great big Redwood. That's a hundred meters in height. Um, and so, yeah, so these, when we convert these old growth forests to plant plantations, we lose so much of that diversity. We, we basically go from hundreds to thousands of fungal species to maybe four or five or maybe 10, and it takes decades, decades, if not a hundred or more years to recover that diversity. And if the plan like in our BC forest is to, you know, cut those forests again in 50 or 60 years or a hundred years, even you'll never recover that diversity mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so, you know, eventually you start to lose, you lose biodiversity over time. Speaker 0 00:29:21 It, it sounds a bit like we're talking about alienating trees from their conditions of production. Um, I'm just throwing that in as a bit of a joke, but, Speaker 5 00:29:29 Well, yeah, I mean, we, we really are, you know, not giving them a lot of choices, right. <laugh> well, we're not, we're not leaving them with the full suite of arsenal they need in order to survive and, and grow and, and be really productive. Speaker 0 00:29:42 So, uh, I wanna, I wanna ask a bit about, uh, about the nature of this society. Okay. Um, the way that you just talk about it and describe it, um, makes it sound like the, the networks connecting the trees are much more than simply connections amongst individual trees. Uh, and of course we have that tendency, right. We see the trees and not the forest, but, but a single tree is not a forest and trees in the forest are not simply individuals, but as I was thinking about it, it, it seemed to, we don't have a language to imagine or talk about this kind of entity without using, you know, the terms and concepts. We apply to human beings in society. And, um, mm-hmm, <affirmative>, you know, is there another way to talk about forests? That's not either reductionist or anthropocentric. Speaker 5 00:30:31 Yeah. You know, this, this is a very interesting topic. And, and I think, you know, it's really easy to, um, dismiss this kind of science because it's anthropomorphizing or the concepts. And I, I wanna explain that, that, and I, I think, yeah, yeah. You know, we don't have in the English language, you know, we're borrowing, or I'm borrowing words that describe human societies to help us understand forest societies. And, and, you know, we've always, you know, for so long thought of trees as just like these inanimate objects that grow and compete, and then, you know, for our youth, for our exploitation. And I want people to understand that they are much more than this, right? They are living societies. They, they are a bunch of, you know, collection of trees and plants and animals, fungi, bacteria that live together and they collaborate and they, they interact, they compete as well. Speaker 5 00:31:29 They have all kinds of interactions that are very sophisticated and that sophistication, um, is necessary from, for these complex society, from which emerges like incredible, um, things like the ability to clean our water and to regulate water flows and to mitigate fire spread, for example, or to, to sequester carbon and house biodiversity. Like there's so many emergent properties from those. And, but we've reduced it down to this sort of in thinking of them as individual trees, we've lost the idea. We've, we've lost this understanding, or we've ignored that they are societies, like, you know, that are a lot like human societies. And I'm using those words to help people understand and really regain that, understanding that, you know, as indigenous people, we have that understanding for a long, long, long time. It's just really in modern science that we've shed that idea. We've forgotten it. Speaker 5 00:32:26 And, um, and we need to bring it. We need to bring that back into, into our, our understanding and our knowing, because by reducing it down to, you know, a bunch of individual trees that compete, we, we have lost our understanding of how the forest works at a bigger scale was lost our understanding that the forest is much more than a bunch of trees. It's a place of SOS. It's a place of spirit. It's a place where we have our existential existence. Depends on that. And, okay, so the other thing is the English language is a pretty limited in how we can describe this. Like I've searched for words. How do we describe these phenomenon that I'm seeing, or that we, you know, many of us have seen, including our Aboriginal people have known about it for thousands of years, about these underground networks and how they nourish the forest and how the trees are important to humans. Speaker 5 00:33:16 As much as humans are important to trees. And they, you know, if we look at their languages, these ancient languages, they have words for these that don't have to borrow from their human societies. They have words that describe this, this amazing phenomenon of the linkages between trees and the linkages between people and trees and the linkages between all creatures and even in their languages. They're losing those amazing words, the English language lacks those words. And so, you know, if it lacks those words, I've gotta use what we have. And it also helps people understand and relate, um, to something that might, they might not have known about before. So it's, it's important. I think there's many reasons to use, you know, for me to use this, what we would call anthropomorphizing it's, it's important. And there's one more point here that I wanna make. Yeah. Speaker 5 00:34:08 And that is, um, this idea of anthropomorphizing, it's really a clever tool that scientists, or they use that word to kind of dismiss certain kinds of science, right? They say, oh, you, you know, you're becoming part of your science and therefore you're not objective well, you know, what, you know, being so objective and being removed from what we study is actually making us miss a lot of stuff. Right. We've become so, um, enamored with ourselves to be objective that we've forgotten that we are part of this world, right? That, that the trees are our relations that the, that the, the animals that live in, in the forest are our relations. We've actually evolved from similar, from common ancestors. And for us to forget that is actually, you know, is hazardous to us. <laugh> right. For us to forget that we are related to trees and we're related to, to the animals of the forest and the feminine in the ocean is actually part of the reason we're having so much trouble with our environment, because we've exploited it as though it's not, you know, as though we are superior as though we're not part of it as though we're not, um, part of this whole world that's connected together. Speaker 5 00:35:17 So there's multiple reasons for using these words. For sure. Speaker 0 00:35:20 Yeah. You, uh, you, you preempted some of my questions there, but, but that's okay. Um, you mentioned back back, uh, at some point you talked a bit about, you know, what are called ecosystem services provided by forest, which is also part of the, of the economist lexicon, you know, the, the environmental economist lexicon, but that seems again, to be quite utilitarian, right. We should save fors because they allow us to survive, um, physically. And, um, and I, I mean, I I'm really interested in, in what you, you know, what you said subsequently about our relationship to the, to the natural world. Um, but of course, well, I shouldn't say of course, but, but this is a, this is a perspective that's very strongly resisted. Um, in part, because of our, you know, national, well, I don't wanna include Canada, but, but America national ideology right. Which is organized around individualism and competition. And some of these, these sorts of things in which does infuse our science very, very deeply. Um, but I, I'm wondering if, if, you know, you mentioned that there are some indigenous, uh, words or terms to, uh, that, that describe these relationships and, you know, I know translating them is a little bit difficult, but, but is it possible to, to translate them or to, uh, Speaker 5 00:36:43 Yeah. There, you know, I think that there is, and I think, you know, as, as our, as the indigenous people regain, you know, their power back and, uh, their jurisdiction over resources and, you know, at least in Canada, you know, we're trying, we're going through a reconciliation of truth and reconciliation process of trying to, you know, um, to, to reinstate, um, you know, the, the rights of, of indigenous people and to, to allow them to, to fulfill their, what they view as their obligations to the land, to look after the resources, because when Europeans came to north America, they were disenfranchised from their land. They weren't allowed to look after their land anymore, or to watch the variability in the oceans, in the forest and, and to, to respond to it instead, you know, the Europeans kind of took over all those resources then said, okay, we're gonna do it. Speaker 5 00:37:39 We know a better way. Well, you know, we know the consequences of that. We, we, you know, they're not very good <laugh> um, and so in part of that re you know, reinstatement, if you wanna say, or I don't know what the right word is, but to, for the eventually, you know, I think there's gonna be a rebalancing. And, and, and part of that rebalancing is trying to reinvigorate the languages, the, the languages that are disappearing. And there are, you know, a lot of indigenous people who are trying really hard to keep their languages speak, their languages, recover their languages, which were forbidden to be spoken actually in Canada for, for a long, long time. Now they're, you know, they're reconnecting with the, with that language and the words, um, it's gonna take, you know, I don't know what those words, I'm, I'm not an indigenous person. Speaker 5 00:38:29 Um, but I do in talking with them. I know that, uh, with my friends, I know, know that, that they're working really hard to, to recover those words. There's one, you know, one phrase that is very common among, uh, a lot of indigenous cultures worldwide. And that is that, you know, we are one with the earth. We are one, and in the Cosalish language, the, the Humalin language group, uh, the word that described we are one is Netas. And that that's about the only word that I know and it's, but it's that, that concept that we are all linked together, that we are one with this earth, that concept is, is universal. And there are many, many words in many languages that describe that, not just the Cosalish language. Speaker 0 00:39:15 Yeah. I mean, if I can, uh, <laugh> again, sort of go down a rabbit trail, we're brought up to think about ours and yours, um, from a very early age, right. And, and or mine and yours, I should say, right. As opposed to, to ours. And so it's, it's hard to, uh, you know, growing up in a different, in a, in a culture or society, which has a very different view of human nature relationships that becomes fundamental to one's, you know, world perspective. It's very difficult to change that, especially when it's, when it's a widespread sort of perspective. Um, and I actually, those who listeners who have listened to, to other sustainability now broadcasts know that I, I keep bringing up this whole question of relationality amongst, amongst, uh, humans and relationality to the, the natural world and the way in which we are constituted, not simply by our own individual consciousness, but by our relationships, I sound like I'm preaching to you. Um, I saw sorry about that. <laugh> but, but Speaker 5 00:40:21 No, I, I completely agree with you. We, we are about our relationships Speaker 0 00:40:25 <laugh> in, in fact, but Speaker 5 00:40:26 Yes, carry on. Yeah. Speaker 0 00:40:27 With, without those relationships, we are not humans. And so, right. And so, I mean, that inverts the, the whole argument about, uh, Margaret Thatcher's argument about there's no such thing as society, there's actually no such thing as individuals. Um, mm-hmm <affirmative> but, you know, trying to, to figure out how to, how to frame that, um, mm-hmm, <affirmative> in a, in a persuasive way is really difficult just because of the way that we've been brought up. Um, let me, let me shift again, sort of shift topics here. So, um, in, in one of the passages, in your books, in your book, excuse me, you, you talk about the way in which you had to take systems apart, uh, to be able to publish results and, and you, right. I soon learned that it was almost impossible for a study of the diversity and connectivity of a whole ecosystem to get into print. There's no control. The review has cried at my early papers. Um, so, so how have you dealt with that? Because it's still, well, you know, know it's still kind of dominant, isn't Speaker 5 00:41:34 It? Yeah. It's very dominant. In fact, you know, there's been some change, but, you know, the per you know, the, the process of publishing still requires, in fact, even more so used to be that you could publish like a 50 page monograph or monogram. And, um, and that was hard to do, but people would still in, it would be like this full suite of studies that was from beginning to end and journals would take these big tones on. And now, you know, the trend is for journals just to publish these little tiny soundbites, almost, you know, with one objective and one hypothesis, or maybe multiple hypothesis, but the, but the, the papers themselves are quite short and succinct, and that sort of drives us towards more reduction of science. But then, you know, at the same time we've got this whole arm of science, that's just, that's emerged in the last decade or two called complex adaptive systems, science or complexity science. Speaker 5 00:42:33 Yeah. Yeah. And that, that science tries to, you know, address systems level, uh, phenomenon, and, and there's whole journals that, that, you know, that are, uh, built around that concept. And so it's easier to publish those kinds of broad reaching papers, but generally still in academia, you know, people are still rewarded and, um, you know, through grants and promotion and, you know, professorships by, you know, how many papers they can publish, which drives them to publish smaller and smaller papers. And so it really is a system that is like another self reinforcing loop, right. That, um, but you know, what, what I did when, when I started publishing, I would, I try to do these big studies and I would try to publish them. And yeah, they would basically say, you can't just walk through the forest and expect to publish your work. Yeah. You can't just observe things. Speaker 5 00:43:27 You have to, you know, have controls and you've gotta manipulate things and you've gotta, you know, reduce it down to a few little things that was like a common theme. And, and I did do that. Right. I did do that. And I, and I was able, but I was still able to find out a few things. Um, now I'm, I'm publishing bigger studies and, and, you know, and there are more venues for doing that. Um, but you know, we still are, you know, the, the up and coming professors are still kind of trapped in this. If they wanna get ahead, if they wanna get tenure, if they wanna get promoted, they still have to, to follow this mantra of reduction in science and publishing small bits and pieces. Speaker 0 00:44:06 Yeah. That's the nature of the academic ecosystem. I guess we need to take a short break. So, uh, let's go ahead and do this. You're listening to Ks QD, 90.7 FM on your radio dial and Ks qd.org streaming on the internet. This is sustainability. Now, my name is Ronnie Lipshitz. And my guest today is professor Suzanne Samar of the university of British Columbia who studies the social life of trees, her new book, finding the mother tree, discovering the wisdom of the forest has just been published. Um, I, I, I did wanna bring up this, this one, um, issue that I, I pointed out to you that, that you're written about by Lincoln TAES, who's a professor emeritus of molecular cell and developmental biology at UCSC, UC Santa Cruz. And, and since, you know, it's local, I thought it would be interesting for listeners to, to hear about this. Speaker 0 00:45:05 So his most recent co-authored opinion is plants neither possessed nor require consciousness. Um, and I thought it was all, it was interesting that all eight co-authors on the opinion piece are men and, you know, so that sort of two questions, well, then he, he also writes what we've seen is that plants and animals evolve very different life strategies. The brain is a very expensive organ, and there's absolutely no advantage to the plant to have a highly developed nervous system. You know, I don't think we're talking about the same. He's talking about the same thing as you as, as what you are talking about, is that correct? Speaker 5 00:45:42 Yeah. I haven't read that paper and I, I, I will. Um, Speaker 0 00:45:46 But I, I, I don't know if it's worth your time, but let's yeah, that's, that's an editorial comment. Okay. Speaker 5 00:45:51 Um, okay. Yeah. I, I think that, you know, there's a, there's a great appeal for people to take up positions that, you know, that, that are kind of like this, you said this, and I'm gonna say this. And, and, and really the truth is in between. Um, but you know, trees do not, and plants do not have nervous since they do not have brains, but they have highly evolved structures that serve as you know, these complex networks that are actually biological neural networks. That doesn't mean it's a brain. It just means it's a pattern. And that pattern is that you have hubs and links and you have nodes, and they are pattern in a way that is highly, um, efficient that transmitting information across these systems, they're resilient because they have multiple linkages that if some linkages are broken, then others will take over. Um, there is methods of transmitting information through, um, through, through, uh, filaments, the fungal filaments in this case, but in a brain, it would be like, uh, neurons and axons. Speaker 5 00:46:52 There are neurotransmitter like chemicals that actually transmit through these fungal networks as well, that, you know, they're basically moving resources and information around. Um, and, and so there's a lot of analogies. There's a lot of similarities, but they're not the same. And so when, when, when people try to say, oh, you know, it's not, this, it's not a brain. It's not a nervous system. Well, yeah. It's not a brain and it's not a nervous system and plants don't need those, but they need other things that have highly conserved features and evolution that work. Right. Right. They evolve because they work. Yeah. So they have these complex neural network or biological neural networks, not nerves, but the pattern is of a complex network. Speaker 0 00:47:35 So it's a very sort of different approach if you can use that term or, or strategy for, um, for surviving, I guess is how you could think about it. Yeah. Um, and Speaker 5 00:47:47 Yeah. You know, Speaker 0 00:47:48 Right. Go on, go on. Speaker 5 00:47:50 Well, yeah, I mean, these, these systems, you know, they're, they're, they're designed to be able to grow and, and have, um, strong linkages they're, they're designed to retreat and grow and reinforce and, um, you know, adapt, they're very adaptable. They heal easily and it doesn't, you know, it, it it's that pattern that's evolved it's that, that, uh, architecture that has evolved because it works so well. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yeah. But anyway, go, go on. I think I interrupted you. Speaker 0 00:48:22 No, no, no, actually actually not, it, it, it, you know, as I've been thinking about it and about what, what he says, right. That, that we've evolved well, animals have evolved. Consciousness is a way of, of responding to their environments. Right. And, and of course, the question is whether those strategies are instinctual, biological, or, or learned, right. That's, I mean, evolutionary biology wants to say everything just about everything is instinctual. And, um, you know, others want to want to say, well, yes, there is that sort of basic framework, but how we deal with the world, you know, is very much about the environment, but, but plants have a different, if I can use the term strategy against that sort of implies agency or a creator, which, you know, I want to avoid both of those that, um, that they're not out there actually saying, oh, you know, well, this is what I should do in order to survive. It's a, it's a, it's a, it is an autonomic system. Is that how we would call what we would call it? I'm I'm not sure. Um, Speaker 5 00:49:27 You know, yeah. I, again, we're, you know, we get in this trap of comparing, you know, our human selves to forests and plants and say, oh, you know, nothing is like us. And, and it's true. We're unique species. And we, we have a consciousness that we, we define that consciousness because we are who we are. And we say, oh, plants don't have that. But plants have other ways of perceiving their environment where, you know, all these species, all individuals are trying to make sense of their environment to survive. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And whether you, you know, want a pigeonhole into consciousness, um, or agency, one thing that plants do have, like, they, they perceive and, and the, uh, and, and they're, they're very perceptive of who's around them. What, how related they are, what species they are, you know, what condition they're in. Um, and then they, they change their behaviors accordingly. Speaker 5 00:50:24 And, and that gives them agency, you know, to, to, you know, to, to, you know, maybe grow roots in this direction to survive. Right. Mm-hmm, <affirmative>, they have decision points at, in, in, in how, you know, the different, you know, their roots and their aboveground parts, how they grow and, and, you know, sort of like the Western scientists would say, well, they're just responding. And they're, you know, they're, they're, they, they don't have, um, they don't have agency that, that it's just a response or an interaction, or, and it's very clinical. And, and by reducing our thinking about plants down to that level, we miss so much, that's why, you know, scientists can only ever explain they're so happy when they can explain like 50% of the variation and how the plant did that. And it it's because they're missing the other part. Right? Yeah. Yeah. It's that magical part that we dismiss so easily, because we are so afraid that we, we're not going to compare them to us because obviously we are superior and, you know, have consciousness and therefore are, are dominant. Speaker 0 00:51:27 <laugh> yeah. Maybe thinking that we're unique is part of the problem. Listen, I, the, my last question has to do with gardens. And I don't know if this is a question you can answer, but I, I had a couple of shows on gardens recently, and I have a couple of languishing fruit trees in my backyard. And it seems to me, they lack those networks, which could help them along. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. So I'm wondering, is there anything our listeners can do to help their trees thrive in their backyards and gardens? Speaker 5 00:51:54 Well, yeah, for sure. I mean that, you know, trees and plants, they, they grow in communities, you know, it's pretty rare to see, or to find like, uh, a forest or a community of, of plants or fruit trees. Well, fruit trees are different cuz we plant them, but yeah. Yeah. But they grow by themselves. Yeah. You know, that they, that they're there by themselves or they're the only species they, they thrive in communities. So there's plants doing different things. You know, they, they might root in different layers of the soil. They have crowns that have capture light in different in the crown, or they capture different wavelengths. There's, you know, such variation and they, you know, to, to have a thriving ecosystem, you know, it's good to have a society of plants to have, have a community of multiple species doing different things because they actually, um, are synergistic, right. Speaker 5 00:52:46 They're complimentary to each other. And they, you know, for example, um, if you have trees that, that root deeply, they can bring water up from deep in the water table, bring it up and share it with neighboring plants. And therefore the whole community is thriving in those neighboring plants. Maybe they, you know, some of them might have they'll have other skills, like being able to fix nitrogen or access phosphorous in certain kinds of soils. You know? So having those companions really actually allows the community to more fully, uh, use or capture the resources available to, to the community. Okay. So yeah. I mean, having communities of plants is much better than having them all Speaker 0 00:53:26 Along. Okay. So you heard that here. So professor Sam, thank you for being my guest on sustainability now. Speaker 5 00:53:34 Thank you. That those are great questions. That was lovely to talk to Speaker 0 00:53:38 You. Yeah. It was great to talk to you. Um, for our listeners, I looked on YouTube and I found 12 videos, star starring professor Simard. Um, so there's plenty of information about her work, uh, online. And you can also look up the mother tree project to learn more about her research. And as always, I've put links to resources in the blurb for this show. So thanks for listening and thanks to all the staff and volunteers who make Ks Q D your community radio station, including Christine Barrington, who was, who was engineer for this show. So until every next, every other Sunday, sustainability now.