Published On 12/2/2023
In 2016, the science podcast Radiolab ran an episode called “From Tree to Shining Tree” about the mysterious, secret world of trees. With a jeweler’s magnifying glass, Roy Halling, a plant researcher at the New York Botanical Garden, who specializes in fungi showed reporter Jennifer Frazier thin white threads stringing out from the roots of trees. These strings are actually hollow tubes, a complex network of fungi that break down items in the soil, converting them into usable minerals that feed trees the nitrogen, phosphorous, calcium, potassium, lignen, and copper that trees need to thrive. In return, the trees give the fungi sugar, but when tree times are tough, the fungi release sugar back to trees. These long tubes link into a vast networking system that connects tree roots to tree roots.