Imagine a forest. You see trees. They stand apart. They seem alone. But beneath your feet is a world of secrets. All the trees are connected by a busy network. This network is known as the Wood Wide Web. It’s the internet for trees. They use it to talk. They use it to share food. They use it to send warnings. This web is made of fungi.
What Is The Wood Wide Web
The web is composed of filmy threads. These threads are called mycelium. They’re the fungi’s body. The threads themselves are finer than hair. Miles and miles of them spread underground through the earth. They connect to tree roots. This connection is called mycorrhiza. It means fungus root.
Tree and fungus strike a deal. The tree manufactures food using the energy of sunlight. It supplies a little sugar to the fungus. The fungus has a good nose for water and nutrients in the soil. It gives these to the tree. Both sides win. This deal is the spider in the web.
How The Web Works
The fungal threads link multiple trees. They connect various types of trees. They connect extremely old trees to quite young ones. The threads make a pathway. Food as well as mess ages can pass through along this road.
Consider it as a subway system underneath a city. The train lines are the fungal threads. The stations are the trees. Nutrients are the passengers. They move from tree to tree. A tree with surplus food can share it with a tree in want. A tree under siege can call out for a warning. It’s all going on in the soil, out of view.
What Trees Talk About
Trees are good neighbors. They talk about many things.
They share food. A tall old tree can help a short young tree. The sapling is in the shadow. It cannot make much sugar. The old tree pushes sugar into the web. This allows the young tree to establish itself. A sick tree may receive help from healthy ones nearby.
They send warnings. When a bug bites down on it chemical are released from the tree. These substances enter the web. Nearby trees sense the chemicals. They know an assault is on its way. They begin manufacturing their own bug poison before the bugs even get there. This is a tree alarm system.
They recognize family. A mother tree can recognize its own seedlings through the network. It will allocate more food to its own young. It helps them survive. Trees care for their family.
They fight enemies. Some plants are not trees. Some plants are thieves; they take food without giving anything in return. Some trees can detect these bad plants. They could inject poisonous chemicals through the web to kill them. It is a war in the dirt where no one gets hurt.
The Key Players Fungi
Fungi are not plants. They’re their own kingdom of life. The fungi in the web are generally mushrooms you’ll never see. Their fruit is the above-ground mushroom. The web is represented by their bodies below ground.
There are various types of fungal networks. Some are generalists. They fit several tree varieties. Some are specialists. They bonded to one tree species only. The web is healthiest with a wide variety of fungal types.
Why The Web Matters
The Wood Wide Web makes the forest Mighty. It is a support system.
It helps trees survive stress. During a drought linked trees fare better. Moisture can migrate through the web from wet zones to dry zones. A tree with water can give to a thirsty tree.
It helps forests grow back. Its web is still there when a big tree falls. The web can nurture new seedlings. The wisdom of the old tree is in the web. The new trees use it.
It stores carbon. The fungal web sequesters a ton of carbon in the soil. This helps fight climate change. And a healthy web ensures more carbon stays in the ground.
It creates healthy soil. The web holds soil together. It prevents erosion. It is the great fertilizer of soil for all plants.
Threats To The Web
Human behavior harms the Wood Wide Web.
Clearcutting is very bad. When all the trees are cut, the web collapses. The fungus threads starve without live tree partners. The soil is impoverished and vacant.
The threads are severed in plowing the soil. Farming can damage the delicate lattice underground.
Chemical pollution can poison the fungi.
When you plant only one kind of tree, you create a weak web. A natural forest is filled with connections. A tree farm has few. The trees are sicker and more alone.
What We Can Do
We must protect the web. We don’t have to treat forests the way we do.
Cut trees carefully. You cut down some trees but leave a lot of them. Leave the mother trees. They are the hubs of the web. They teach the young trees. This is called selective logging.
Avoid soil disturbance. “Stop plowing forests or running heavy equipment through them.” It breaks the web.
Plant many types of local trees. The contributes to many types of fungi returning. The dense the forest, the tight its web.
Let fallen trees rot. Even a dead tree is still part of the web. Its nutrients return to the soil via the fungi. It feeds the next generation.
What the Wood Wide Web wants us to know. A forest is not a bunch of trees. A forest is one living thing. The trees are connected. They talk. They help each other. They fight together. They are a community.
This alters how we perceive nature. Trees are not just quietly there. They are active social beings. They have relationships. They have families. They have friends.
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Because when you walk in a forest, you walk on top of a city. Beneath your feet, there are highways and markets and chat rooms. There is commerce and charity and news. There is the life we hardly consider.
We need to take a lesson from the forest. We must see the connections. What we do impacts the entire web. We are hurt one part of it, you have hurt the totality.
It’s smart to Take Care of the Wood Wide Web. It makes forests strong. Healthy forests provide with us clean air and clean water. They bring us peace and beauty. They are our comrades on this earth.
The next time you look at a tree remember it is not alone. It is connect to the neighbouring one. It is connected to a larger, silent network. A community of sharing and caring. A network that has been effective for millions of years. We should listen to its whispering lesson. We are all connected too. We live and die with the forest. We are obliged to care for the web of life that has cared for us all.