In 1997, a young Canadian forest ecologist named Suzanne Simard (the model for Powers’ character) published with five co-authors a study in Nature describing resources passing between trees, apparently via fungi. Trees don’t just supply sugars to each other, Simard has further argued; they can also transmit distress signals, and they shunt resources to neighbours in need. “We used to believe that trees competed with each other,” explains a football coach on the US hit television show Ted Lasso. But thanks to “Suzanne Simard’s fieldwork”, he continues, “we now realise that the forest is a socialist community”.
Why would organisms trading with each other be socialist? As opposed to market – and socialist and market are not descriptions along the same axis anyway.
My grandpa noticed that lone trees were more likely to be blown over by a storm than trees in a forest. They hadn’t learnt the words to Kumbaya, he explained.
I had no idea Austin Powers is also the inspiration for tree-woo!
I’ve heard about this before. But it didn’t seem a particularly logical explanation. It would be far more likely that fungi would be farming the trees. Since fungi are amongst if not the largest individual organisms on the planet, some extending over square miles. It’s the detritus from trees fungi depend on for nourishment. So one could see how the trait would have evolved. It’s in the fungi’s interest the trees proliferate. Which would of course make the fungi slaveholders. And the Graun supporting slavery.
I’ve heard this before and didn’t get it. Shirley trees are the most self interested of organisms. They gobble up all the resources around them to the detriment of everything else. For them it is literally a race to the top.
I guess the socialist angle for this comes from some interpretation of “to each according to his need, from each according to his ability”. Those trees happily sharing with each other with a red flag fluttering overhead.
Of course, these genteel folks never stop to think about who, in a real socialist society, would be deciding what their needs and abilities were. Clue – it wouldn’t be them. Just like in this case, apparently, where it isn’t the trees deciding what goes where.
For the authors of this study, it’s a straightforward way to promote their ideology:
Trees are good. Trees are socialist. Therefore socialism is good.
The trees ought to listen to Rush. Socialism in the forest will only end in disaster.
To me, pine plantations look more socialist than ancient woodland.
People set them up as a kind of project, all the members have to be the same, you’re not allowed to be anything but straight, nobody wants to visit because it’s really boring, and it all ends up with everything dying and the whole lot being bulldozed away.
Since trees are likely to drop their seed nearby, it follows that a group of similar trees are family, so The Selfish Gene applies. They would naturally evolve beneficial mechanisms to nearby kin.
They would fiercely compete between species though don’t tell plod. “He was openly elmish!”
The forest is exactly like a socialist community: food is often scarce and you can be killed by predators at any time.
‘Which would of course make the fungi slaveholders. And the Graun supporting slavery.’
Thank you BiS. I love your reasoning.
“likely to drop their seed nearby” – Onan has so much to answer for.
Sam,
“ To me, pine plantations look more socialist than ancient woodland.”
Last week we stopped for lunch at a very remote coffee in the Highlands. It had been a lovely drive up in the usual single track road. I mentioned to the owner that it looked a right mess where huge swathes of pine trees had been removed.
Apparently they suck all the water and nutrients out of the surrounding area and they are being removed them as they are destroying the native bogs and the ecosystem that relies on them.
That sounds quite socialist as well.
PS if you’re ever up there it’s worth the drive, we did from Helmsdale and back.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/FzWMFoQCK451PkJZ7?g_st=ic
They aren’t conscious. It’s no more socialist or free-market than a mammalian bloodstream.
I’ve heard this before and didn’t get it. Shirley trees are the most self interested of organisms. They gobble up all the resources around them to the detriment of everything else. For them it is literally a race to the top.
The mirror-blossom was a terrible weapon. Its primary purpose was to focus sunlight on the green photosynthetic node at its center. But it could also focus to destroy a plant-eating animal or insect. The sunflowers burned all enemies. Everything that lives is the enemy of a photosynthesis-using plant; and everything that lived became fertilizer for the sunflowers.
Ringworld – Larry Niven
Speaking of Ringworld, here’s a mildly amusing short short story from the offshoot Man-Kzin Wars series that gradually works its way to being on topic:
https://www.baen.com/Chapters/9781451638165/9781451638165.htm
I’m sure that nice Dr Lysenko would have sorted out the socialist trees in short order.