Back in the year 1902, an Indian scientist names Jagadish Chandra Bose wrote in his paper “Responses in the Living and Non-Living” about how the plants grew quickly when exposed to nice music and whispers and poorly when exposed to negative environment of loud speech and harsh music. He also wrote that plants become depressed in gloomy weather and when exposed to pollution. He even wrote “All around us, the plants are communicating, it is just that we don’t notice it”. It was clear through his paper that plants and trees could feel pain and are sensitive to pleasure. But the question remained, do plants possess the ability to talk to each other and communicate, and if they do, how do they do it?
Crown shyness is a phenomenon practised by some trees species that do not overlap or touch each other’s canopy and make almost no physical contact and maintain a channel of sorts. This behaviour excited the ecologists and put more pressure on the question if they do indeed talk to each other and have a way to communicate to each other.
Ecologist Suzanne Simmard, while researching for her doctoral thesis almost two decades ago discovered the answer to the question that has plagued ecologists for more than a century. She discovered that trees communicate through a network of latticed fungi buried in the soil and communicate their needs and send each other required nutrients. She discovered that plants and trees in fact do talk to each other and they have developed a good network for this very purpose.
Trees have a symbiotic relationship with the fungus under the soil that exists around its roots. These fungi are beneficial to the roots and provide better exploration opportunities. These fungi have a network of fine thread-like structure throughout the soil called mycelium. These threads are responsible to bring in food and water to the tree and in exchange receive the necessary nutrients like sugar or the energy formed through photosynthesis. These thread-like structures not only transport food and water in exchange for sugar but sometimes they also act as messengers and transfer messages from one tree to another and some time they also act as couriers through which the trees send the required nutrients to and fro. These thread-like structures are like the internet of the forests and are a well-connected system and it is not just that the trees have a relationship with another tree. Small plants, trees and huge trees, even seedlings can be a part of this network.
This mutually-beneficial relationship is called “mychorriza” and explains the relationship as to how the trees and fungi depend on each other for survival and how the fungi form the well-connected network to assist the trees and plants.
Even though they look like an individual out there in the woods, but in reality they are a well-connected network that relies on one another for their survival and growth. Thus trees do talk and have connections just as like humans.
