#naturescience

Years ago, I took an online course on mountains, and one fact that stuck with me from it was about how people in the United States accidentally polluted the water in New York City by cutting down trees.

It was the 1800’s, and the trees in the Catskill Mountains were cut down to accommodate growing populations, and as a result, the water quality for New Yorkers deteriorated rapidly. Yes, the agriculture pollution and sewage did play a part, but the trees were decided to be such a big problem, that they decided something had to be done.

So, they purchased land, and 18000 the natural ecosystem.

How does this all work? With watersheds.

“Watershed: an area of high ground from which water flows down to a river” Cambridge Dictionary

Imagine it is raining in a forest. Droplets hit the ground, and —thanks to the vegetation which slows runoff — it is absorbed into the soil like a sponge.

As the water move through the soil, microbes are actively removing harmful pollutants, silt is filtered, and plants are helping to remove fertilizers.

Some of the water will end up in our lakes and streams, but will be much cleaner than when it started.

"The ability of forests to aid in the filtration of water doesn’t only provide benefits to our health and the health of an ecosystem, but also to our pocketbooks. Forest cover has been directly linked to drinking water treatment costs, so the more forest in a source water watershed, the lower the cost to treat that water. Forests provide these benefits by filtering sediments and other pollutants from the water in the soil before it reaches a water source, such as a stream, lake or river." American Forests

Since this intake and outtake of water is gradual, removal of these forests can even to lead to a higher chance of drought and floods.

I have talked about in a previous post that plants communicate, as well as feel and smell in the unique way they do, but can they see?

I went into this subject as skeptical as you’d likely expect. After all, if something can “see,” then we expect them to have eyes, right? I certainly have not seen eyes on the tree in my back yard. Thankfully, not all people think like me, though, and one of those people was Charles Darwin.

Darwin started experimenting by putting canary grass in a room with a dim candle, and noted that even in the dim lighting, the plant bent towards the light(Heliotropism).

“Heliotropism prevails so extensively among the higher plants, that there are extremely few, of which some part, either the stem, flower-peduncle, petiole, or leaf, does not bend towards a lateral light.” Charles Darwin

So how was that canary grass sensing where the light was? Darwin speculated that the “eye” of the plant was at the very top of it. Essentially, something at the top would sense the light, then that would send signals downward through the plant, telling it to move.

To test his theories, he tried cutting off the very top on one plant, covering the top of another with a hood, then put a glass hood on one more. The first two stopped leaning, while the one with the glass hood continued moving.

“This discovery suggests that plastoglobuli in plants may act as eyespots,” Baluška says. Scientific American

His research led scientists to realize that plants monitor their visible environment all the time. For example, if you record a video of a seedling with a single light source and move that light source occasionally, you can see the seedling moving(though slowly) to chase the light.

Here is an example of that

Plants can sense both infrared and UV lights, which we are both blind to, they can sense both dim or strong light as well as what direction it is coming from, and they know if something is blocking their light.

While humans see with eyes, they sense with cells.

You might think that might be it, but I have one more interesting plant to introduce. Boquila Trifoliolata is a very unique plant for one simple reason; it mimics other plants. First, it vines around it’s target plant, then it matches the target right down to the the shape of the leaves, the color, and the size.

It does not actually need to touch the target in order to mimic it, which led some scientists to believe that it was smelling the other plant, until recent studies tested the Boquila with fake plants.

 “A simple experiment by placing an artificial vine model above the living plants has shown that these will attempt to mimic the artificial leaves. The experiment has been carried out with multiple plants, and each plant has shown attempts at mimicry.” Jacob White & Felipe Yamashita | Tayor and Francis Online

If you are new to learning about this, you may be surprised that trees share carbon, and even favor their own children. Now before you call me crazy and leave, this is backed by science, I promise.

This starts with Suzanne Simard, a Canadian ecologist. In her research, she bagged the above-ground portions of several wild trees to isolate them, then injected some of them with tracer isotope carbon dioxide gases. If she later used her Gieger counter and found that a plant she never injected had a reading, that would mean that the plants were sharing through fungi networks.

It turns out they were sharing, and not just sharing, but doing it selectively. For example, during times when the fir trees were still growing but the birch were leafless, the fir would send more carbon to the birch compared to other times in the year.

"I found that most was in the birch and fir. Just by looking at the data, I could determine there was communication going on between them." Suzanne Simard in the article Secrets of a tree whisperer: ‘They get along, they listen – they’re attuned’

And it was not just mutually beneficial competition, either, there was also favoritism. It turns out the mother trees recognize their own young, and not only do they spread out underground to reduce root competition for their kids, but they also send their kids more carbon than other seedlings of the same species. This increases the chance of survival of her kids.

On top of all that, if a mother tree is dying, she will send out a mixture of carbon and defense signals. Those defense signals act as instructions on how to deal with stresses and can make the seedlings stronger.

So how do the trees do all that? With fungi! When we think fungi, we tend to think mushrooms, but the mushroom is just a small part of the fungi. Most of the fungi are underground and look like tiny thread-like roots, and is called Mycelium.

That mycelium weaves through the soil, and infects the roots of trees and plants. In turn, trees use this network to their benefit by sending carbon to their roots, through the mycelium, and to the roots of another tree. This is nicknamed the Wood Wide Web.

So, the next time you are walking through a forest, know that below your feet, there is a complex network of communication happening between trees.

If you want to learn more about this, Suzanne Simard has a YouTube video here, and a book titled Finding the Mother Tree. For a quick video explanation with more information, here are some videos: