5x15 is delighted to welcome two leading environmentalists, who have helped us to understand the complex cycle of forest life and why it must be preserved before it's too late.

World-renowned scientist Suzanne Simard is author of Finding the Mother Tree, a dazzling scientific detective story from the ecologist who first discovered the hidden language of trees. No one has done more to transform our understanding of trees and now she shares the secrets of a lifetime spent uncovering startling truths about trees: their cooperation, healing capacity, memory, and, she argues, wisdom and sentience.

Raised in the forests of British Columbia, where her family has lived for generations, Professor Simard did not set out to be a scientist. She was working in the forest service when she first discovered how trees communicate underground through an immense web of fungi, at the centre of which lie the Mother Trees: the mysterious, powerful entities that nurture their kin and sustain the forest. Though her ground-breaking findings were initially dismissed and even ridiculed, they are now firmly supported by data. As her remarkable journey shows us, science is not a realm apart from ordinary life, but deeply connected with our humanity.

Jonathan Drori‘s Around the World in 80 Trees is a worldwide bestseller, now in 18 languages. Following in the footsteps of Phileas Fogg, he tells the stories of 80 magnificent tree species from all over the globe, entwining plant science with history, culture and folklore to illuminate how trees play a role in every part of human life. From the romantic to the regrettable, from the seemingly familiar to the flamboyantly exotic, our relationship with trees is complex and never dull. His latest book, again illustrated by Lucille Clerc, is Around the World in 80 Plants.

Dr. Suzanne Simard was raised in the Monashee Mountains of British Columbia. She is Professor of Forest Ecology in the University of British Columbia's Faculty of Forestry, and has earned a global reputation for her research on tree connectivity and communication and its impact on the health and biodiversity of forests.

Jonathan Drori – writer and tree-lover – is a trustee of The Eden Project and Cambridge University Botanic Garden, an Ambassador for the Woodland Trust and the WWF, and Honorary Professor at Birmingham University’s Institute of Forest Research. Previously, Jon was a Trustee of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and for BBC TV, he was responsible for more than fifty science documentaries and series. He is known for several botanical TED talks, which have been viewed millions of times.

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