On a hot and humid day in early August, I placed my hand on the smooth, gray bark of a centuries-old beech tree in Pennsylvania. I did so both to honor this magnificent arbor elder and to share greetings from another standing a thousand miles away, our own Grandmother Oak at Prairiewoods.
I was at Pendle Hill, a Quaker retreat center near Philadelphia, attending my Circle of Trust Facilitator Preparation Program retreat through the Center for Courage and Renewal. On the Pendle Hill grounds, a 300-plus-year-old beech tree stands sentry. It is the Pennsylvania State Champion of its species and was a young tree when William Penn founded nearby Philadelphia. The Pendle Hill community venerates this grand dame of the forest as “Mama Beech.” She is beloved kin, wise grandmother, living symbol, and guardian spirit.
When Mama Beech was a young tree, half a continent away in what is now Iowa, a fledgling bur oak was growing in land “owned” by France but lived in by the Indigenous peoples of the middle land’s prairies and woods. More than three centuries later, that enduring tree still stands sentry next to Dry Creek, revered as “Grandmother Oak.” For the Prairiewoods community, she is also beloved kin, wise grandmother, living symbol, and guardian spirit.
Physically, Grandmother Oak is very different from Mama Beech. The oak’s leaves are larger, long and lobed, whereas the beech’s are smaller, oval, and serrated. The oak’s bark is dark, rough, and gnarled. When I place my hand on Grandmother Oak’s trunk, which I always do when I visit her, my fingers dip into fissures, and my palms feel the roughness. In touching Mama Beech’s bark, my palms and fingers encountered a smoother, almost silky surface, and my eyes took in a lighter, more silvery color. Scattered on the ground below each are the dissimilar progeny—rounded acorns with a smooth, tough, leathery shell, and beechnuts held within spiky husks.
Yet both trees share similar histories and hold similar positions of honor for their human kin. They both were born among Indigenous human residents, grew amidst European colonization, and now enjoy their mature years as revered matriarchs on land dedicated to cultivating human goodness, respect for nature, and relationship with the whole. They also have suffered similar challenges. Three years ago, Grandmother Oak lost limbs in the fury of the historic derecho, and Mama Beech did in a violent storm late last year.
Thanks to the vision and research of Canadian forest scientist Suzanne Simard, we now know that the idea of a “mother tree” is more than symbolic. Trees are interdependent (as is all life), social, and cooperative. They communicate with each other and share nutrients (even cross-species), in large part through underground mycorrhizal fungi networks. Central to the arboreal community are “mother trees,” the oldest matriarchs who are the hubs of these woodland networks, delivering carbon to young seedlings through the fungal network around their roots, making such decisions based on generational genetic memory and lived experience, which provides them with an understanding of what is best for the health of the forest community.
I don’t think that the mycorrhizal fungi network extends from Pennsylvania to Iowa so that Grandmother Oak and Mama Beech communicate with each other, but I’m not a forest scientist, and I know that we’re only beginning to understand the global interdependence of Gaia. But I do know that both these glorious mother trees preside over a shared purpose across the miles. The spirit of interbeing and honor for the natural world infuses both of their homes—Prairiewoods and Pendle Hill.
I was moved to share Grandmother Oak’s spirit, which I carry with me, in my own small way with Mama Beech at Pendle Hill. As I write, I have yet to revisit Prairiewoods and Grandmother Oak, but when I do, you can be sure I will once again place my hand against her rough bark and share the greetings and tribute from Mama Beech that I now also carry with me in my own spirit.
—Thomas Dean
Grandmother Oak image by Israel Walker, Mama Beech by Thomas Dean