According to new research, scientists are now answering that question with a big resounding “Yes!” Korena Mafune, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Washington, explains that trees in a forest are not isolated individuals; they form a multispecies community of underground fungal networks—which is a way of saying that they “talk to one another”; and they do this by passing chemical messages, warning each other of incoming hazards.
She suspects that a mini version of this fungal network may even exist in the high branches. She’s found soil beneath moss growing in the canopy, with tiny trees sprouting from the living branches of big old ones. She calls this “a mini-forest within a forest.”
Richard Grant, another scientist working on the newly discovered subject of what we can call “forest communities,” thinks of it as a family affair:
“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.”
While this sounds warm and fuzzy and gives us hope for the future renewal of forests that are being decimated by climate change and human folly, upon reflection—and with a little help from scientists–we understand that this may not be such good news. The extraordinary significance of this “family communication” of young and old living side by side is this: while the youngest trees are proliferating despite fires and climatic change, the oldest trees are disappearing forever, and they are the matriarchs and patriarchs of these forest communities that initiate the communication that keeps them all alive. Without them, these wayward, improvident juveniles may not be able to communicate and live in such fruitful communities.
