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  • NEWS FEATURE

The ‘Mother Tree’ idea is everywhere — but how much of it is real?

A popular theory about how trees cooperate has enchanted the public and raised the profile of forest conservation. But some ecologists think its scientific basis has been oversold.
  1. Aisling Irwin

    1. Aisling Irwin is a freelance journalist based in Oxfordshire, UK.

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Natural forest with sunlight coming through trees in British Columbia, Canada in 2018.

Forests in Canada were the backdrop for early experiments on whether trees can communicate through an underground fungal network. Credit: Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty

It was a call from a reporter that first made ecologist Jason Hoeksema think things had gone too far. The journalist was asking questions about the wood wide web — the idea that trees communicate with each other through an underground fungal network — that seemed to go well beyond what Hoeksema considered to be the facts.

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Nature 627, 718-721 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00893-0

References

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