Exploring How and Why Trees ‘Talk’ to Each Other
Living in harmony with Nature-- on a <i>scientific basis</i> --is pretty much the most crucial challenge facing our (global) civilization right now.<p>I was just reading about Muir and his communication with the living Nature around him.  This isn&#x27;t &quot;mystic&quot; mumbo-jumbo: many of the chemicals being used in these tree+fungus networks are also used in our &quot;internal&quot; systems.  We speak tree on the chemical level.<p>-------------------------------<p>I want to report on some events in a backyard here in San Francisco.<p>The western part of the city, from Twin Peaks to the ocean, is mostly built on sand.  Before the houses were there it was scrub and beach for more than a mile.<p>The backyard in question consisted of this very sandy soil, with just enough organic matter to bind it a little and turn it tan-brown.  Some plants had been set in years earlier, a couple of rose bushes, lilacs, some calla lilies.  Grasses and oxalis and some other things were doing their best, but there were patches of bare dirt, and by dirt I mean of course just dirty sand.<p>So I went to the store and got a bunch of bags of organic hummus&#x2F;mulch and just plastered every open space with it an inch thick.  It was rife with mycelium and the fungus lost no time in binding and sealing itself together in a single mass over the sandy soil.  Realizing this I made sure to connect all the patches together by thick bands of mulch so the whole yard could communicate.<p>The specific thing I want to mention is this:  After a few weeks, maybe less, I was watering a patch of the mycelium mulch one day when I stopped and stuck my finger into the ground to check absorption depth.  While the surface was completely wet, even drenched, imagine my astonishment when I found that just under the surface less than a quarter of an inch down it was bone dry.<p>I watered that patch for a solid minute until puddles has formed in every slight depression.  Still it was completely dry just under the surface.  But the puddles vanished in seconds!<p>I watered it again, just dumping water on it from the hose.  A certain amount would puddle up, but the bulk of the water simply vanished.  Gallons of water and still the soil was bone dry just below the wetted top layer.<p>I poked around a bit more and found that the mulch had become nearly solid mycelium bound around the little wood chips and other media in it.  It had a glossy sheen and was forming a sort of sheet or membrane rather than just strands.  The point is: that fungus had sealed the water off from the sandy very-high-drainage dirt underneath and was channeling it somewhere.<p>There is much still to learn about how Nature works.