Talking trees? Do they quietly communicate through an underground fungi network? Here are the facts

[Suzanne Simard, a forest ecologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver] said that trees help each other out by dispatching resources and warning signals through fungal networks in the soil — and that more mature individuals, which she calls mother trees, sometimes prioritize related trees over others.

The idea has enchanted the public, appearing in bestselling books, films and television series. It has inspired environmental campaigners, ecology students and researchers in fields including philosophy, urban planning and electronic music. Simard’s ideas have also led to recommendations on forest management in North America.

But in the ecology community there is a groundswell of unease with the way in which the ideas are being presented in popular forums.

Last year, [ecology experts challenged] Simard’s ideas in a review, digesting the evidence and suggesting that some of Simard’s descriptions of the wood wide web in popular communications had “overlooked uncertainty” and were “disconnected from evidence”.

…

The review laid out what the authors regard as the three key claims underlying the popular idea of the ‘mother tree’: that networks of different fungi linking the roots of different trees — known as common mycorrhizal networks (CMNs) — are widespread in forests; that resources pass through such networks, benefiting seedlings; and that mature trees preferentially send resources along the networks to their kin. The scientists concluded that the first two are insufficiently supported by the scientific evidence, and that the last “has no peer-reviewed, published evidence”.

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