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I burned my skin, went back to the shade and checked for stings of wasps. I should show my girls how to make baking soda. I sat down and leaned back against the old tree, feeding that crescent of plants across the mycorrhizal net, the needles of the young people trembling in the evening air.
The old trees were the mother of the forest.
They were sites Mother Trees.
Well, mother and father trees, each Douglas fir has male cones and female seeds of pollen.
But … I wanted to be a mother. The old look at the young. Yes that’s it. Mother Trees. Mother Trees connect the forest.
This Mother Tree was the central axis where the trees and plants nested, with threads of different species of fungi, with different colors and weights, connecting layer by layer, in a complex and strong network. I pulled out a pencil and a notebook. I made a map: Mother Trees, Plants, Plants. Lines sketched between them. It was a kind of neural network model that came out of my drawing, like neurons in our brain, with some nodes with a greater connection than others.
The saint is burned.
If the mycorrhizal network is a facsimile of a neural network, the molecules that move between the trees were similar to neurotransmitters. The signals between the trees could be as sharp as the electrochemical impulses between the neurons, the chemistry of the brain that allows us to think and communicate. Is it possible for us to perceive trees as different from our neighbors as we do from our own thoughts and moods? Moreover, do the social interactions between trees have a significant impact on their shared reality between the two people involved in the conversation? Can the trees be detected as soon as possible?
How similar could the mycorrhizal network be really be in a neural network? Of course, the pattern of the network and the molecules transmitted from one node to another could be similar. But what about the existence of the synapse? isn’t it essential to signal in the neural network?
Could information be transmitted through synapses in mycorrhizal networks, as is the case in our brains? Amino acids, water, hormones, defense signals, allelochemicals (poisons) and other metabolites crossed the synapse between the fungi and plant membranes. Molecules that arrive from another tree through the mycorrhizal network can also be transmitted through the synapse.
Chemicals are released at these synapses, and the information must then be transported through an electrochemical gradient from the source sink to the tip of the fungal root to the end of the fungal root, similar to the functioning of the nervous system. It seemed to me that the same basic processes were taking place in the mycorrhizal network of fungi that were taking place in our neural networks. When we solve a problem or make an important decision or align our relationships it gives us that shine. Perhaps connection, communication and cohesion arise from both networks.
It was widely accepted that plants use neuron-like physiology to perceive their environment. Their leaves, stems, and roots detect and understand the environment and then change their physiology: growth, ability to feed nutrients, photosynthetic rate, and water-saving stomata closure. Fungal hyphae also perceive their environment and alter their architecture and physiology. Like parents and children, my girls and Don and I, adapting to change, aligning ourselves to learn new things, figuring out how to cope. I would be home tonight. Motherhood.
Latin verb understand it means to understand or perceive. Intelligence.
Mycorrhizal networks may have the signature of the mind. At the core of the forest’s neural network were Mother Trees, as essential in the lives of small trees as they were in the well-being of Hannah and Nava.
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