Browsing the reader, I just stumbled into Ministry of the Fence’s post about a TED talk by Suzanne Simard. She explains her findings of the interconnection and communication among trees.

Incidentally, for my last birthday, my sweetheart gave me a book by Peter Wohlleben, called “Das geheime Leben der Bäume” (The secret life of trees), discussing the very same topic.

Science has discovered, that trees communicate, share information and nutrition and help each other fighting attacks from certain vermins. Mother trees, so called hub-trees, nurture their own offspring, healthy individuals help out sick ones, experience is shared throughout the community. And not only among one species, but across different species. Trees do that via funghi, who help transport this information in exchange for food.

The makers of the movie Avatar must have known this, when drawing up their story of an all wise and healing forest community.

I tell you, it’s a whole world out there and underfoot, to be discovered. Who’d have thought, that my favourite food on earth – mushrooms – are basically forest newsmongers.

I just wish, my grandfather, who first introduced me to the great world of the forest and trees, knew this. He was the one showing me his secret places of mushrooms, which type of trees to look for, to be certain to find a special type of mushrooms. He knew, which species love to habitat side by side, so he was able to tell, where to look for mushrooms.

Just by living in the wooded mountains of Austria, watching nature, he had such a huge knowledge about trees. Which kind of woods to use for certain purposes. What kind of trees grow well with other, certain species. When would be the best time to harvest wood of a certain kind.

He would have loved to learn about these latest scientific findings. Just as I do.