Talking Plants

"A mat of long, thin filaments that connect an estimated 90 per cent of land plants"  ( Nakaya 2018) Welcome to the wood-wide web, a place where trees trade, share and befriend others of their species, and perhaps other kinds, through an underground network of cooperating fungal threads. In some extreme renditions, a benevolent social network where plants support one another through acts of kindness and self-sacrifice.  A counter view is emerging among those who should know – the mycologists – that while the wood-wide web is a catchy slogan, it is also an overhyped and overextended metaphor, perhaps ‘a fantasy beneath our feet’.  While nearly all land plants have fungi associated with their roots – called mycorrhizae – there is little evidence yet that these symbiotic associations do more than provide nutrients to a plant in exchange for sugars to the fungus.  As to this fungal–plant relationship creating an incipient social network of some kind, that is at best wish...