The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate (2018)

FYI there is also an illustrated edition, with cool pictures illustrating cool tree things: https://greystonebooks.com/products/the-hidden-life-of-trees...!

If you like scientific nonfiction in this vein, I'd also recommend:

- The Wild Trees

- Mycelium Running

- Mind of the Raven

- The Klamath Knot

Or if you want tree fiction:

- The Overstory

(edit: dunno how to do bullet lists here)

There is a German word that translates as forest death that I cannot recall. It was coined when tree farms became a thing and they quickly learned that creating a monoculture of all the same kind of tree undermined their health.

Trees thrive in a climate of diversity.

We've known for years that trees do things like give off chemicals when insects attack or give off a pulse when chopped into, like a scream not intended for human ears.

At first I thought the idea of trees (or plants in general) communicating something out of the esoteric corner.

But over time I read quite a bit of interesting reports on scientific experiments showing a few interesting ways plants communicate information towards other plants.

The book added to that. It was really an interesting and mind opening read.

>Scientists call these mycorrhizal networks. The fine, hairlike root tips of trees join together with microscopic fungal filaments to form the basic links of the network, which appears to operate as a symbiotic relationship between trees and fungi, or perhaps an economic exchange. As a kind of fee for services, the fungi consume about 30 percent of the sugar that trees photosynthesize from sunlight. The sugar is what fuels the fungi, as they scavenge the soil for nitrogen, phosphorus and other mineral nutrients, which are then absorbed and consumed by the trees.

To me it looks like the fungi are farming the trees. All what is described as cooperation among trees (and seem paradoxical to supposed competition) more fits the fungi's purpose of maximizing of that sugar production (as well as shade and moisture which are key to fungi thriving) on given square footage.

The trees can't force fungi to pass signal nor to transfer nutrition from a healthy to a weak tree. It is fungi who have all the power here and they would take the nutrition from a large healthy tree and pass it to a weak tree to provide for the tree not dying and thus not getting a sunny and dry spot and losing the sugar production from that spot.

I loved this book, finished it like 2 months ago totally worth reading 10/10

Trees are the top predators of mankind. They have driven a system where people get buried and tree roots eat them and spread the food values via the mycorrhizal network. Sleep well in the arms of Fungius...

I really enjoyed this book. Recommended for anytime looking to get a slightly deeper look into how forests function, and why trees do what they do when they do.

Here's (the?) original research on the mycorrhizal networks, from 1997:

"Net transfer of carbon between ectomycorrhizal tree species in the field" by Suzanne Simard, et. al.

https://www.nature.com/articles/41557

Yes. Magic School Bus already did this episode.

The Ents are coming!