Exploring How and Why Trees ‘Talk’ to Each Other
Absolutely fascinating work!  However, I&#x27;m not entirely sold on the usage of the term &quot;mother tree.&quot;  While Simard says<p>&gt; That’s how we came up with the term “mother tree,” because they’re the biggest, oldest trees, and we know that they can nurture their own kin.<p>the interview doesn&#x27;t reference any work that specifically states these mother trees will preferentially nurture kin over other species.  For example, when she describes the more controlled greenhouse experiment with Douglas firs and Ponderosa pines, an injured mother tree Douglas fir dumped carbon into the network and the ponderosa pines still absorbed it.  She may have other work that describes some kind of kin preference, but I don&#x27;t see it cited and I don&#x27;t quite understand what the mechanism to make this happen would be.<p>Rather, (as a layman without any knowledge of the work and published papers around this topic), I see this phenomenon not as the result of &quot;mother trees&quot; but from &quot;farmer fungi.&quot;  The fungi, because of their large networks and relationships with the trees, become &quot;resource managers&quot; of the forest.  The fungi have an incentive to make sure that the trees are healthy and will continue to provide nutrients for the fungi.  When younger trees are injured, that is a threat to the fungi&#x27;s survival, and therefore one possibility is that they have evolved this mechanism that transports resources from older trees to the younger ones to help the younger trees survive.  The relationship between these fungi and trees are normally symbiotic, but the older trees &quot;tolerate&quot; (or fail to evolve some immune response to) this mildly pathogenic behavior because it <i>likely</i> benefits its nearby offspring or close kin.<p>I think the concept of the &quot;mother tree&quot; <i>might</i> be slightly anthropomorphic, assuming that a large, multi-organ plant must be more intelligent and possibly be even more caring than small fungi that must only be able to perform simple functions.  In reality, the fungi are the organisms in the best position to evolve this beneficial behavior.<p>Again, I&#x27;m a non-expert with zero knowledge on this topic.  If anyone could provide a reference to a free online paper that describes these &quot;mother trees&quot; as preferentially nurturing kin, I could be persuaded.  And that would be a very interesting read!