News
The incredible Internet of the Plants
According to the latest research there is an internet-like net of underground connection that links plants together and allows then to communicate.
Not with optic fibres but mycelia is the media they use, tiny filaments of fungi.
Apparently 90% of plants are connected to it in what has been described as "Earth's natural internet". The 19th-century German biologist Albert Bernhard Frank coined the word "mycorrhiza" to describe these partnerships. Mycorrhizae also connect plants that may be widely separated. Researchers believe large trees help out small, younger ones using the fungal internet. Seedlings in the shade – which are likely to be short of food - get more carbon from donor trees.
It is thought that plants can exchange information through mycorrhizae about their environment, about pests and other dangers, alerting each other.
On a darker note, some plants steal from each other using the internet. There are plants that don't have chlorophyll, so unlike most plants they cannot produce their own energy through photosynthesis.
Plants have to compete with their neighbours for resources like water and light. As part of that battle, some release chemicals that harm their rivals.
Cybercrime is there as well.
After all the idea expressed in the film "Avatar", of a world of organisms all interconnected, is not so far from the truth.
Not with optic fibres but mycelia is the media they use, tiny filaments of fungi.
Apparently 90% of plants are connected to it in what has been described as "Earth's natural internet". The 19th-century German biologist Albert Bernhard Frank coined the word "mycorrhiza" to describe these partnerships. Mycorrhizae also connect plants that may be widely separated. Researchers believe large trees help out small, younger ones using the fungal internet. Seedlings in the shade – which are likely to be short of food - get more carbon from donor trees.
It is thought that plants can exchange information through mycorrhizae about their environment, about pests and other dangers, alerting each other.
On a darker note, some plants steal from each other using the internet. There are plants that don't have chlorophyll, so unlike most plants they cannot produce their own energy through photosynthesis.
Plants have to compete with their neighbours for resources like water and light. As part of that battle, some release chemicals that harm their rivals.
Cybercrime is there as well.
After all the idea expressed in the film "Avatar", of a world of organisms all interconnected, is not so far from the truth.