imagine you're walking through a forest I'm guessing you're thinking of a
collection of trees but a forest is much more than what you see underground there
is this other world a world of infinite biological pathways the connect trees
and allow the forest to behave as though it's a single organism my coryza
literally means fungus route through the mushrooms the mushrooms are fungal
threads that form a mycelium and where the fungal cells interact with the root
cells there's a trade of carbon for nutrients
the web is so dense that there can be hundreds of kilometers of mycelium under
a single footstep that mycelium connects different individuals not only of the
same species but between species we have found that mother trees nurture their
young a mother tree can be connected to hundreds of other trees mother trees
will send their excess carbon through the mycorrhizal network to the
understory seedlings they even reduce their own route competition to make
elbow room for their kids when mother trees are injured or dying they also
send messages wisdom onto the next generation of seedlings
so we've used isotope tracing to trace carbon moving from an injured mother
tree down her trunk into the mycorrhizal Network and into her neighboring
seedlings not only carbon but also defense signals
through back-and-forth conversations they increase the resilience of the
whole community that's because there are many hug trees and many overlapping
networks
so trees talk but they're also vulnerable not only to natural
disturbances like bark beetles that preferentially attack big old trees but
high-grade logging and clear-cut logging you see you can take out one or two hub
trees but there comes a tipping point because hub trees are not unlike rivets
in an airplane you can take out one or two and the plane still flies but you
take out one too many or maybe that one holding on the wings and the whole
system collapses
massive disturbance that this scale is known to affect hydrological cycles
degrade wildlife habitat and emit greenhouse gases back to the atmosphere
which creates more disturbance and more tree die box
we need to save our old girls for us
these are the repositories of genes and mother trees and mycorrhizal networks
we need to reestablish local involvement in our own forests
when we do come we need to think the mother trees and networks so they can
pass their wisdom on to the next generation of trees we need to
regenerate our forests with a diversity of species and genotypes and structures
allowing natural regeneration we have to give Mother Nature the tools she needs
to use her intelligence to self heal and we need to remember that forests aren't
competing with each other they're super co-operators
you