The way that I look at trees changed a while ago when I first came across the idea of the “wood wide web”. Rather than being slow growing solitary things, existing in their own space, it turns out that trees are connected and a wood is not a collection of individual trees but a community.
Research has found that trees share food and information through an amazing underground network made up of tree roots and mycorrhizae fungi. Tiny threads of fungi join together with tree roots and this allows the trees to access some nutrients that the fungi can break down and the fungi to get nutrients from the trees. But it doesn’t end there. The reach of the fungi networks means that the trees become linked up and can communicate with each other. Young saplings get supported by ‘mother’ trees which share food, dying trees pass on their last resources to other trees, and if one tree is getting attacked by something it can somehow pass messages through the network to other trees to warn them. Amazing!
This has inspired some new interpretation about the ‘wood wide web’ and trees to try and communicate how wonderful these woody ‘beings’ really are.
Trees have always played an important role for people as well as wildlife. We have tried to highlight this with some snippets of information about different trees. So you can find out more about the Holly king and Oak king and who rules the roost and when; what might have inspired Christmas trees; which wood was supposed to be used to make witches wands; and many other things…
We are going to try and find a way of representing the web of connections between trees on the reserve and a second post will follow about that.