#gtrees

[thunderstruck9]

Barry McGlashan (British, 1974), The Writer As A Boy, 2024. Acrylic and oil on canvas, 131 x 151 x 4 cm (unframed)

[sumpix]

The Secrets of the Wood Wide Web

In London’s Epping Forest, a scientist named Merlin eavesdrops on trees’ underground conversations. By Robert Macfarlane​

Earlier this summer I spent two days there, wandering and talking with a young plant scientist named Merlin Sheldrake. Sheldrake is an expert in mycorrhizal fungi, and as such he is part of a research revolution that is changing the way we think about forests. For centuries, fungi were widely held to be harmful to plants, parasites that cause disease and dysfunction. More recently, it has become understood that certain kinds of common fungi exist in subtle symbiosis with plants, bringing about not infection but connection. These fungi send out gossamer-fine fungal tubes called hyphae, which infiltrate the soil and weave into the tips of plant roots at a cellular level. Roots and fungi combine to form what is called a mycorrhiza: itself a growing-together of the Greek words for fungus (mykós) and root (riza). In this way, individual plants are joined to one another by an underground hyphal network: a dazzlingly complex and collaborative structure that has become known as the Wood Wide Web.