When the late Stephen Sondheim wrote “Into the Woods,” I am pretty sure he was not thinking about mycorrhizal fungi.
Still every time I hear Sondheim's lyrics, “The woods are just trees, the trees are just wood," I think of the relationship between forest and fungus.
You see, trees are not just wood. According to scientists, trees are part of a large, interconnected community interacting with their own and other species.
But it’s more than that. In the musical "Into the Woods," one thing that connects the interlocking fairy tales is the mothers. Cinderella’s mother died. The Baker’s Wife wanted to be a mother. Jack frustrated his mother. Rapunzel’s mother was overprotective to the extreme. But all of the mothers cared for and protected their offspring.
We now know, thanks to the groundbreaking research of Suzanne Simard and countless other researchers, that trees in a forest are connected by a network of fungus… a phenomenon playfully called the “Wood Wide Web.”
Because of the underground network of mycorrhizal fungi, trees can communicate and actually share resources.
In a healthy forest, the hub, a mature tree often called the Mother Tree can use the fungal webs to share excess nutrients with her offspring seedlings, aiding their survival.
And if the needs of her own offspring are met, the Mother Tree, which is connected by the fungal web to hundreds of other trees, will send excess nutrients to other trees, sometime even trees of other species. And those trees share with each other.
Furthermore, thanks to the fungal web, the connected trees can warn each other of danger.
The Mother tree protects a forest because, as the Witch in the musical explained to her daughter “Someone has to shield you from the world.”
As long as the Mother Tree is not cut and stays healthy, thanks to the incredible network of fungi, No One Is Alone.
