“The Wood Wide Web: The Secret Communion of Forests.”

The Wood Wide Web: The Secret Communion of Forests

*Diary Entry — 2017*

**Mycelium or Mycorrhizae**

Mycelium or mycorrhizae. It is the underground network of symbiotic fungi binding to plant roots.

These fungal threads carry out nutrient exchange, even supporting young plants and giving life to very old tree stumps—the parental trees around which these later trees grew.

This fungal web is called the *Wood Wide Web* (WWW).

One of the oldest trees on Earth is a spruce in Sweden, which is 9,500 years old.

**African Acacia**

When a giraffe starts nibbling leaves, the tree lets out a chemical whose scent wafts through the air.

Other trees down the line smell it and produce a short-lived toxin, so when the animal moves to these trees, it just sniffs and moves on.

Things, of course, become normal after some time.

**The Leaf and the Insect**

The leaf tastes the saliva of the leaf-eating insect.

The tree sends out chemical signals to attract predators to eat the insect.

**Electrical Impulses and the Wood Wide Web**

Electrical impulses pass at the rate of one-third of an inch per second.

This is the communication that passes between the roots as well as through the body and canopy of a tree.

The Wood Wide Web may nourish the dry stump of a cut tree for decades.

**Yellowstone National Park, USA**

Here, wolves disappeared in the 1920s.

Due to this, elk herds increased rampantly, and they chewed away willows, aspens and cottonwoods along water channels.

It meant that animals and birds dependent on these trees left.

And wolves made a comeback after seven decades.

Elk herds were forced to keep moving instead of staying in one place and browsing rampantly.

The trees sprouted, and water channels stabilised. Animals like beavers returned.

So that shows Mother Nature has its ways of maintaining balance.

The unseemly wolf, whom most wouldn't welcome, turns out to be a big balancer in this vast ecosystem.

**Forests as Superorganisms**

Forests constitute superorganisms with interconnections through Wood Wide Webs.

They form a wild commune because it is easier to survive and grow collectively.

It generates a climate of humidity, water, nutrients and moderated temperatures.

Planted forests strongly lack the bonhomie observed among wild forests.

**Trees Communicating Through Scent**

Trees use scent as a means to communicate.

Elms and pines release pheromones attracting wasps to devour defoliator, leaf-eating caterpillars.