Your Gift Tree May Grow to be a Mother Tree

By Katie Neis

In a forest you can find trees so massive that, no matter how many steps you take backwards, you might never see the tops. Sunlight filters down through their canopy giving just enough light, and darkness, to inspire new flora and fauna to push up through the mossy ground and stretch their branches to the sky. Some call these trees that establish the delicate balance of a healthy forest Mother Trees.

Mother Trees’ large root networks form a thick blanket that bridges all life in the forest. Root systems reach out and form physical connections sharing nutrients between plant species. These networks facilitate amazingly diverse plant life, and resiliency builds throughout the forest.

Setting the stage for the evolution of the forest, the Mother Tree provides seeds for the future—each tiny capsule a replica of herself, to nourish the forest floor with food and life.

Even as a Mother Tree is dying, in an amazing show of selflessness, she pushes nutrients back into her root system to benefit the trees she’s leaving behind.

Trees represent the best qualities in humans, and remind us how interconnected we all really are. On Mother’s Day, don’t forget to tell the ones you love most how much you love them, and how much they have meant to you. Set the stage to become your own Mother Tree one day.

If you’d like to purchase a Gift Tree for this Mother’s Day in the hope that it might become a Mother Tree at the Collin’s Sanctuary near Forest Park, you can order your Gift Tree online or contact Blair McMillan at 503-467-2531.

–Neis is a Neighborhood Trees Assistant for Friends of Trees.

In the above video, Dr. Suzanne Simard of the University of British Columbia leads us through a forest to a Mother Tree. Video posted by Dan McKinney.