Science Fictions reviews the scientific evidence behind Entangled Life winner of the British Royal Society's 2021 award for best science book.
There isn't any. The book claims that trees communicate with each other by means of shared fungi in the roots, warning each other of insect attacks, sharing nutrients, and preferentially helping kin. It's all very woo, and I recall claims of plant consciousness back to my undergraduate days. Our physics TA assured us that plants responded to being spoken to kindly and encouragingly, and would register some sort of surface electric response if another plant in the room was destroyed. It is great fun listening to the podcast breaking down the arguments one by one. For example, related trees near a "mother tree" grow worse, not better; there are alternative explanations for every claim.; If you enclose a plant's whole root system in a fine mesh bag it might not grow as well for reasons other than lack of fungal communication with other trees.
Yet through it all I thought they dropped a stitch. The believers in tree communication thought that this was all peaceful, kindly, and encouraging.
I found the underlying assumption that this purported nutrient exchange is a form of "sharing" humorous. Why would these be good communist trees "To each according to its need, from each according to its abilities" in a sharing-the-means-of-production situation? It's not even a capitalist scheme where one tree offers the lowest price. The Douglas Fir is bullying the White Birch when it is stronger, demanding carbon. When it is weaker and in the shade, the birch raids the root village and takes back what it can. Mother trees are tribalist, even strictly clannish, giving resources only to their own offspring. What have they got against immigrant trees? This seems a terrible example for the children to be teaching them in school.
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