The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature's Great Connectors

The fungus not only penetrates and envelops the tree’s roots, but also allows its web to roam through the surrounding forest floor. In so doing, it extends the reach of the tree’s own roots as the web grows out toward other trees. Here, it connects with other trees’ fungal partners and roots. And so a network is created, and now it’s easy for the t

These fungi are mutualistic. They connect the trees with the soil in a market exchange of carbon and nutrients and link the roots of paper birches and Douglas firs in a busy, cooperative Internet. When the interwoven birches and firs were spiked with stable and radioactive isotopes, I could see, using mass spectrometers and scintillation counters,

Strong, productive—and ruggedly individual. Whether one of a million in a forest or standing by itself on the savannah, a tree grows silently on its own, reaches its own heights, and ultimately dies alone. Right? Wrong. The aspen tree, it turns out, is not a solitary majesty, as I learned by sheer coincidence later that day from a friend who knows

That’s the trouble with people, their root problem. Life runs alongside them, unseen. Right here, right next. Creating the soil. Cycling water. Trading in nutrients. Making weather. Building atmosphere. Feeding and curing and sheltering more kinds of creatures than people know how to count.