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Communication & Cooperation Among Trees

James_H

James_H

And I like to roam the land
Joined
May 18, 2002
Messages
7,629
Do Trees Talk to Each Other?
Smithsonian Magazine
... A controversial German forester says yes, and his ideas are shaking up the scientific world

I’m walking in the Eifel Mountains in western Germany, through cathedral-like groves of oak and beech ... The trees have become vibrantly alive and charged with wonder. They’re communicating with one another, for starters. They’re involved in tremendous struggles and death-defying dramas. To reach enormousness, they depend on a complicated web of relationships, alliances and kinship networks. ...

Wise old mother trees feed their saplings with liquid sugar and warn the neighbors when danger approaches. Reckless youngsters take foolhardy risks with leaf-shedding, light-chasing and excessive drinking, and usually pay with their lives. Crown princes wait for the old monarchs to fall, so they can take their place in the full glory of sunlight. It’s all happening in the ultra-slow motion that is tree time, so that what we see is a freeze-frame of the action. ...

My guide here is a kind of tree whisperer. Peter Wohlleben, a German forester and author, has a rare understanding of the inner life of trees, and is able to describe it in accessible, evocative language. ...

A revolution has been taking place in the scientific understanding of trees, and Wohlleben is the first writer to convey its amazements to a general audience. The latest scientific studies, conducted at well-respected universities in Germany and around the world, confirm what he has long suspected from close observation in this forest: Trees are far more alert, social, sophisticated—and even intelligent—than we thought. ...

Since Darwin, we have generally thought of trees as striving, disconnected loners, competing for water, nutrients and sunlight, with the winners shading out the losers and sucking them dry. ...

There is now a substantial body of scientific evidence that refutes that idea. It shows instead that trees of the same species are communal, and will often form alliances with trees of other species. Forest trees have evolved to live in cooperative, interdependent relationships, maintained by communication and a collective intelligence similar to an insect colony. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering-trees-180968084/
 
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Interview with Suzanne Simard on The Social Lives Of Trees.

Dr. Simard has helped revolutionize the understanding of forests by discovering the ways trees connect with each other via fungal networks.
Her approach was unorthodox, exploring ways that trees cooperated rather than how they competed. She's written a book, which I think (gulp) I may have to get. It's called FINDING THE MOTHER TREE: Discovering Wisdom in the Forest.

Here's a NYTimes review of it:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/books/review/finding-the-mother-tree-suzanne-simard.html

"Her research has built on the work of past researchers, as well as often overlooked Indigenous knowledge, to show that a forest is not a mere collection of individual trees competing for light and nutrients, but rather a sentient, interacting community." (My emphasis.)
 
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The 2016 New York Times review of Peter Wohlleben's book includes the following examples of social / interactive behaviors among trees:
... Presenting scientific research and his own observations in highly anthropomorphic terms, the matter-of-fact Mr. Wohlleben has delighted readers and talk-show audiences alike with the news — long known to biologists — that trees in the forest are social beings. They can count, learn and remember; nurse sick neighbors; warn each other of danger by sending electrical signals across a fungal network known as the “Wood Wide Web”; and, for reasons unknown, keep the ancient stumps of long-felled companions alive for centuries by feeding them a sugar solution through their roots.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/30/...inds-that-trees-have-social-networks-too.html
 
This Scientific American article summarizes Simard's work and her new book, as well as documenting an interview with her.
‘Mother Trees’ Are Intelligent: They Learn and Remember

Few researchers have had the pop culture impact of Suzanne Simard. ...

What captured the public’s imagination was Simard’s findings that trees are social beings that exchange nutrients, help one another and communicate about insect pests and other environmental threats.

Previous ecologists had focused on what happens aboveground, but Simard used radioactive isotopes of carbon to trace how trees share resources and information with one another through an intricately interconnected network of mycorrhizal fungi that colonize trees’ roots. In more recent work, she has found evidence that trees recognize their own kin and favor them with the lion’s share of their bounty, especially when the saplings are most vulnerable. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mother-trees-are-intelligent-they-learn-and-remember/
 
Article in the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2...mmunication-possible-between-trees-and-people

Branching out: is communication possible between trees and people?​

Aerial view of a forest in autumn.


Trees communicate with each other, store memories and respond to attacks. They have a profoundly positive effect on our emotions … but can we know how they feel about us?
 
On BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour just now;
Professor of Forest Ecology, Dr Suzanne Simard reveals the complex way in which trees communicate.
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The poisonous alkaloid taxus baccata, found in yews and secreted to protect the tree against pests, was mentioned as a possible source of an anti-cancer drug.
This particulalyr interested me because my late father told me in about 1970 that 'The cure for cancer will be found in a tree.'

He'd read this in one of his weirdness books (UFOs, Bigfoot, Hollow Earth, ghosts, ley lines, reincarnation, you name it, he devoured it all and so did I!) and I think it came from the prophecies of Edgar Cayce.

Of course it's a safe bet as lots of medicines come from plants and trees. Taxus baccata has been under medical scrutiny for a while.
I've thought since childhood If we cut down all the trees and destroy the forests, where will our new medical discoveries come from?

Programme website -
(safe BBC link)
Woman's Hour 2/2/2022
 
MrRING said:
I just heard of this concept of tree communication from this nature lover YouTube vid:

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A nice environmentalist video that doesn't actually address the question posed in the title.
 
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