Climate Action Team Book Group

Finding the Mother Tree discussion prompts

Hello fellow climate action readers. I’ve created some prompts ahead of our discussion. This is not homework and I am not the boss of you, so don’t feel you have to answer these questions. I just find it helpful to gather my thoughts ahead of time, so here are some discussion prompts if you’d like to consider our conversation before we meet this Wednesday, March 11 at 7pm.

· What did you discover about the relationship of trees and other plants – and the fungal and mycorrhizal network?

· In what sense does the idea of community apply to the mycorrhizal network between all the trees and plants?

· What does the concept of the ‘Mother Tree’ mean to you?

· How does this book affect how you to think about relationships, whether between plants, animals, or other organisms?

· Do you think Suzanne Simard’s experience and outcome would have been any different if she were male? How so?

· Is there hope?

How do we create it?
How can mycorrhiza help mitigate our climate crisis?
· What’s one simple habit you can adopt this week to fight our climate crisis?

· If you haven’t been able to make it through the book, don’t sweat. Here’s a cheat sheet for you. Just read the first 3 paragraphs of this Wikipedia page

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhiza

Join us to read our next climate-related book, Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard.

According to the review on Bookshop.org: “In this, her first book, now available in paperback, Simard brings us into her world, the intimate world of the trees, in which she brilliantly illuminates the fascinating and vital truths–that trees are not simply the source of timber or pulp, but are a complicated, interdependent circle of life; that forests are social, cooperative creatures connected through underground networks by which trees communicate their vitality and vulnerabilities with communal lives not that different from our own.”