The Mother Tree
The real science of how forests communicate. A six-part, evidence-first deep dive into Suzanne Simard's Mother Tree, the underground Wood Wide Web, the airborne chemistry plants broadcast, the animals caught in the loop, the 2023 scientific reckoning, and the largest living things on Earth. We celebrate what's real, we're honest about what's romanticized, and we treat a live scientific debate as live. © 2026 Selway Solutions LLC · Educational & Institutional Use License (https://history.selwaysolutions.io/index.html#license) · Contact: nick@selwaysolutions.io
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Episodes
Episode 6 — The Largest Living Things
The largest living things on Earth — Pando, the Utah aspen clone of ~47,000 stems, and Oregon's "humongous fungus" — and the vast, under-counted carbon that forests and their fungi hold (Hawkins et al., 2023), seen through a forester's eyes.
Episode 5 — The Reckoning
In 2023 a major review (Karst, Jones and Hoeksema, Nature Ecology & Evolution) argued the field over-read the "Mother Tree" — thin field evidence, positive-result citation bias, and confounded methods — and drew vigorous rebuttals from Simard and colleagues.
Episode 4 — Animals in the Loop
The signaling web reaches the animal kingdom.
Episode 3 — The Airborne Conversation
That fresh-cut-grass smell is a chemical alarm.
Episode 2 — The Wood Wide Web
How the underground "Wood Wide Web" actually works: trees trading carbon for water and mineral nutrients with mycorrhizal fungi, and a mapped network of Douglas firs linked by Rhizopogon fungi.
Episode 1 — Finding the Mother Tree
Where the "Mother Tree" idea began.