Plant Societies

It is the perfect narrative: ancient legends and mysteries handed down only by obscure shamans, primordial gods and universal mothers, food transported over long distances on underground paths unknown to most. What is more, it also involves the revenge of universal altruism over egoism, of the natural community and cooperation over subjugation and competition, or the Darwinian struggle for survival. However, this narrative has a much more solid and scientifically based start than anthropological propositions, i.e., from controllable experiments, using radioactive markers, and with perfectly reproducible results, in the pure tradition of western science, with the official stamp of confirmation in a paper published in 1997 in the prestigious journal Nature (and this time it is true). The author of the paper that started it all, Suzanne Simard, is a Canadian biologist, Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia. She was born and raised in a family of loggers, but don’t imagine a cabin in the woods. The family has a company that works in the immense forests of the Canadian West. In the article, Simard states that she has demonstrated how nutrients – sugars and complex molecules – pass from one large, healthy plant to others that are nearby, but smaller or younger, and less healthy. Perhaps these smaller plants could still be growing, almost overwhelmed by the shade of the forest, or it might be autumn, when they lose their leaves and have the greatest need for nutrients. The donor plant might not necessarily be of the same species as the recipients.