Fulfillment Under Ground by Brian Brown

   Fulfillment Under Ground  

       The Last couple of decades have seen certain aspects of the world of Botany turned on its head. Forget about what you may have learned 50 years ago in college. There is now defensible research that indicates that plants communicate with each other, that they help each other out, and that they essentially make decisions. Darwin got a lot of things right, but the blanket application of the Darwinian principles of evolution may not apply to plants.

 

     Using mild radioactive tracers, researchers have proven that in a community of plants, healthy individuals will share needed nutrients and sugar with weak or ailing neighbors. And not just within a species; sharing takes place between species also. As if a healthier and diverse community is to everyone’s benefit. It isn’t competitive survival of the fittest; it’s let’s help each other so the whole forest can survive. This mutual aid even goes beyond the Kingdom level, if you remember your basic biology. Sharing takes place between plants, which have chlorophyll, and fungi, which do not, and are classified in an entirely different Kingdom. 

     Underground, immeasurable billions of plant root hairs make their way silently through the soil in the darkness, searching and probing for the partners that can meet their needs. Similarly, microscopic, snake-like mycelium of fungi are making themselves available, looking for a hookup for their desires. Each partner has needs and also something to offer the other. When contact happens, they gently wrap around each other, their cellular-level outer membranes reaching out in the gentlest of embraces. The symbiotic attraction is there. The plant says, “I need nitrogen and calcium, can you fulfill me?” The fungi says, “I need glucose and water, can you fulfill me?” If both answer yes, the exchange of nutrients, sugar, and water takes place, each passing molecules of the needed substance to the other and taking what they need in exchange. if one of the partners is weak or ailing, particularly if they are both plants, a one-way exchange may occur, one organism magnanimously giving to the other and taking nothing in return. In this way, a sick partner may become healthy again, and the union can continue. 

     All over the planet, these unions are taking place at every instant, and probably have been since at least the Cambrian era of geologic time, 500 million years ago. Plants predate animals by several hundred million years, and have made it through all the mass extinctions, changing their forms and strategies to adapt to whatever the universe throws at them. They have this survival thing figured out. We would probably be wise to pay closer attention to plants, there is much we can learn from them.

      So, are these trillions of daily trists in the dark sex? No, because no genetic information is being exchanged. But, it feels like SOMETHING…. Betcha didn’t know what those little fuckers were up to down there all this time, did you?