Nature · Nick Mackenzie

The Mother Tree

by Nick Mackenzie

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

Latest episodes

Showing 6 · updated from the feed

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 t

Jul 12
48 min

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 citatio

Jul 11
35 min

Episode 4 — Animals in the Loop

The signaling web reaches the animal kingdom. Plants that summon parasitic wasps as bodyguards, the chemicals in insect spit (like volicitin) that betray a feeding caterp

Jul 10
42 min

Episode 3 — The Airborne Conversation

That fresh-cut-grass smell is a chemical alarm. The airborne channel of plant communication: green leaf volatiles released when a leaf is torn, terpenoids that summon a h

Jul 9
54 min

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 link

Jul 8
42 min

Episode 1 — Finding the Mother Tree

Where the "Mother Tree" idea began. Suzanne Simard's radioactive-carbon experiments showed carbon crossing between paper birch and Douglas fir through underground fungal

Jul 7
44 min

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#141 NEW Nature US

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