Do underground fungi really allow trees to communicate with each other? hassan bensliman / stock.adobe.com
DECRYPTION – Three North American researchers have scrutinized different roles attributed to “common mycorrhizal networks”, sometimes referred to as the “wood-wide web” by their promoters. Their analysis is very critical.
The idea has flourished in recent years: all the trees in a forest would be connected to each other by a vast web of fungal filaments, called ” common mycorrhizal network ». Cet « internet alone » (« wood-wide web in English) would allow trees to communicate with each other, to alert each other, to exchange nutrients and, more generally, to take care of each other. This concept of « cooperative plant community », if you will, was first developed and popularized by a Canadian researcher, Suzanne Simard, who became a star in forest ecology. It was then very widely disseminated (and anthropomorphized) by the book The Secret Life of Trees , by German forester Peter Wohlleben, which has sold millions of copies worldwide. The two key figures then came together around a documentary film, Tree Intelligence, which has finished transforming a seductive ecological tale into a quasi-religion. But what about really…
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