and a Look Beneath the Forest Floor
I’m taking a short break from posting and this Attleboro Pocket Forest series. I’ll return in early October with the next post on how to plan a Miyawaki mini-forest planting day.
In the meantime, here’s a short PBS/NOVA video about one of the less visible parts of forest life. While working on this series, I remembered reading that fungi live on plant roots and can form underground networks connecting different plants.
Watch: “Plants Use An Internet Made of Fungus” — PBS/NOVA, Gross Science
https://www.pbs.org/video/gross-science-wood-wide-web/
The video uses the popular phrase “wood wide web” to describe these networks. The relationships between individual plants and mycorrhizal fungi are a well-established part of forest ecology. Fungi obtain carbon from plants while helping them acquire nutrients and water. But scientists are much more cautious about some of the broader claims that have grown up around the “wood wide web,” particularly the idea of a cooperative, forest-wide communication system through which trees intentionally share resources.
Recent reviews have found that evidence for some widely repeated claims about these networks is limited or open to other explanations. Researchers continue to investigate how common shared mycorrhizal networks are, what moves through them, and how important those transfers are to neighboring plants. Rather than a single harmonious underground “internet,” the forest floor appears to involve a much more complicated mixture of cooperation, competition, and exchange.
Either way, it is a good reminder that much of what makes a forest work happens where we cannot easily see it.
I’ll be back with more on the Attleboro Pocket Forest and on planning a mini-forest in your own community in October.