Recent searches

No recent searches

Search options

Not available on sunbeam.city.
sunbeam.city is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
Sunbeam City is a anticapitalist, antifascist solarpunk instance that is run collectively.

Administered by:

Server stats:

84
active users

sunbeam.city: AboutProfiles directoryPrivacy policy

Mastodon: AboutGet the appKeyboard shortcutsView source codev4.4.2

toxicodendron radicans

Today's fun fact: Forests are inherently socialist. Seriously.

In a forest, most plants are linked together by an underground network of mycorrhizal fungi. Via the fungi, the plants share resources around so that they can all benefit. Wha's more, the plants contribute more or less depending on how much they have. Plants with more resources contribute more to their community, helping to nurture the small, young, and weak ones.

This is one of my favourite random pieces of knowledge!

💚☀️🌳

A forest path on the university campus where I work. The path is lined with trees, with healthy patches of ivy growing up their trunks. Sunlight from above makes the tree leaves a vibrant green.
toxicodendron radicans

Don't take my word for it either. There's scientific literature about plants sharing resources. This paper, Walder et al (2012) is free to read.

This same principle, incidentally, is why intercropping works. 🌱

plantphysiol.org/content/159/2

www.plantphysiol.orgMycorrhizal Networks: Common Goods of Plants Shared under Unequal Terms of TradePlants commonly live in a symbiotic association with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi ([AMF][1]). They invest photosynthetic products to feed their fungal partners, which, in return, provide mineral nutrients foraged in the soil by their intricate hyphal networks. Intriguingly, [AMF][1] can link neighboring plants, forming common mycorrhizal networks ([CMNs][2]). What are the terms of trade in such [CMNs][2] between plants and their shared fungal partners? To address this question, we set up microcosms containing a pair of test plants, interlinked by a [CMN][2] of Glomus intraradices or Glomus mosseae . The plants were flax ( Linum usitatissimum ; a C3 plant) and sorghum ( Sorghum bicolor ; a C4 plant), which display distinctly different 13C/12C isotope compositions. This allowed us to differentially assess the carbon investment of the two plants into the [CMN][2] through stable isotope tracing. In parallel, we determined the plants’ “return of investment” (i.e. the acquisition of nutrients via [CMN][2]) using 15N and 33P as tracers. Depending on the [AMF][1] species, we found a strong asymmetry in the terms of trade: flax invested little carbon but gained up to 94% of the nitrogen and phosphorus provided by the [CMN][2], which highly facilitated growth, whereas the neighboring sorghum invested massive amounts of carbon with little return but was barely affected in growth. Overall biomass production in the mixed culture surpassed the mean of the two monocultures. Thus, [CMNs][2] may contribute to interplant facilitation and the productivity boosts often found with intercropping compared with conventional monocropping. * ### Glossary AMF : arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi CMN : common mycorrhizal network RHC : root hyphal compartment LHC : label-hyphal compartment HC : hyphal compartment [1]: #def-1 [2]: #def-2
·
6boosts·11favorites
Solarpunk Druid

@InvaderXan I really recommend people look up a book called 'the hidden life of trees' as a good layman introduction to how forests are incredible

About