03/19/2026
The “wood wide web “ is a mycorrhizae network connecting trees to trees via roots . Trees are interdependently linked to each other through these underground fungal networks. Trees share water and nutrients through the networks, and also use them to communicate. They send distress signals about drought and disease, for example, or insect attacks, and other trees alter their behavior when they receive these messages
For young saplings in a deeply shaded part of the forest, the network is literally a lifeline. Lacking the sunlight to photosynthesize, they survive because big trees, including their parents, pump sugar into their roots through the network. Wohlleben likes to say that mother trees “suckle their young,’’ which both stretches a metaphor and gets the point across vividly.
To communicate through the network, trees send chemical, hormonal and slow-pulsing electrical signals, which scientists are just beginning to decipher.
A gigantic beech stump was found in a forest, four or five feet across. The tree was felled 400 or 500 years ago, but scraping away the surface with a knife ,the stump was still green with chlorophyll. There was only one explanation. The surrounding beeches were keeping it alive, by pumping sugar to it through the network
Trees also communicate through the air, using pheromones and other scent signals. When a giraffe starts chewing acacia leaves, the tree notices the injury and emits a distress signal in the form of ethylene gas. Upon detecting this gas, neighboring acacias start pumping tannins into their leaves. In large enough quantities these compounds can sicken or even kill large herbivores.
Underneath every one of your foot prints in the forest can be as much is 300 miles of this network that is and can be summed up as earths original Internet.
