The Wood Wide Web: How trees secretly talk to and share with each other

[Terri Benning]

The Wood Wide Web: How trees secretly talk to and share with each other

Trees talk and share resources right under our feet, using a fungal network nicknamed the Wood Wide Web. Some plants use the system to support their offspring, while others hijack it to sabotage their rivals.

Trees secretly talk to each other underground. They’re passing information and resources to and from each other through a network of mycorrhizal fungi—mykós means fungus and riza means root in Greek—a mat of long, thin filaments that connect an estimated 90% of land plants. Scientists call the fungi the Wood Wide Web because ‘adult’ trees can share sugars to younger trees, sick trees can send their remaining resources back into the network for others, and they can communicate with each other about dangers like insect infestations.

This BBC News video by 2D animator and illustrator Jules Bartl explains. Plus, from The New Yorker:

The relationship between these mycorrhizal fungi and the plants they connect is now known to be ancient (around four hundred and fifty million years old) and largely one of mutualism—a subset of symbiosis in which both organisms benefit from their association.

In the case of the mycorrhizae, the fungi siphon off food from the trees, taking some of the carbon-rich sugar that they produce during photosynthesis. The plants, in turn, obtain nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen that the fungi have acquired from the soil, by means of enzymes that the trees do not possess…

The revelation of the Wood Wide Web’s existence, and the increased understanding of its functions, raises big questions—about where species begin and end; about whether a forest might be better imagined as a single superorganism, rather than a grouping of independent individualistic ones; and about what trading, sharing, or even friendship might mean among plants.

Next, watch A Forest Year: Time lapse videos of Earth’s cycle of the seasons, collecting some 350 fungi specimens in the Ecuadorian Andes, and Think Like a Tree.

Plus: What’s the biggest organism on Earth?, How do trees survive winter? and How Do Trees Transport Water from Roots to Leaves?

Bonus: More videos about symbiosis and why biodiversity is so important.