Have you ever talked to your plants when you take care of them? Well, I’m not sure if they can hear us but they can definitely listen to their friends as well as interact with them. It is kind of like telepathy between the plants of a forest.

Plant life commune and cooperate with each other through underground networks of fungi called mycorrhizal networks. These networks eventually form from partnerships between trees where they may exchange certain nutrients with each other which are called mycorrhizae. These mycorrhizae are basically thin threads of fungi that fuse with a tree’s roots to connect them to other trees, and there are more than one type of species.

The partnership can also work in a few different ways. According to Ferris Jabr of the NYT, trade of nutrients consists of “the amount of carbon exchanged among trees being sufficient to benefit seedlings, as well as older trees that are injured, entirely shaded or severely stressed, but researchers still debate whether shuttled carbon makes a meaningful difference to healthy adult trees”, as it isn’t as essential to them. A tree may steal nutrients from another tree like how weeds work stealing nutrients from the ground leaving it empty for other plants. They can also act as lifelines to smaller seedlings that may struggle to gather nutrients which would be more likely to die if cut off from the underground network. A tree could be dying so in response to that it may distribute its remaining carbon nutrients to surrounding trees that are healthy. Through these networks not much can be wasted between the trees of a forest or really any place where vegetation is able to grow.

Another thing to know, is that trees were known as a symbol to represent connection for a long time, and still are. For example, Greek folktales speak of a world tree that holds the earth and sky in its branches while its roots spread over the underworld. Even now trees show connection in the simplest ways like a family tree showing how far our roots go, or maybe through a factor tree in math. It seems that trees’ symbolism of connection applies literally to them as well. So for one, plant life can be a lot more social than I thought they could be having their secret language yet to be decoded by humans, and second, there is still a lot we don’t know about one of our most common neighbors on the planet.