Our latest book discussion in which we explore Robin Wall Kimmerer's The Serviceberry and what we can learn from examples of abundance and reciprocity found throughout the natural world.
Great book and podcast. I liked this quote from the book (page 78)
"The Serviceberries are networked not only aboveground with partners for pollination and dispersal but belowground with webs of mycorrhizal fungi and other microbial communities that are exchanging resources...we used to assume that these fungi were "stealing" nutrients from the trees, but the closer we look, it seems as if the nutrients might be freely given in a network of reciprocity."
That reminded me of this NPR Fresh Air Interview of another botanist Suzanne Simard
"At the time] birches were considered weeds. There was a huge program to spray and herbicide these trees to get rid of them because the foresters viewed the birches as competing with Douglas fir, competing for light especially. I was observing in these plantations, though, that when they weeded out the birches, when they sprayed them or cut them, that there was a disease in the forests that would just start spreading like a fire. It was called Armillaria root disease. I really thought, we're doing something wrong here. And so I wanted to know whether the birches were somehow protecting the firs against this disease and that when we cut them out it actually made it way worse....I had learned about these mycorrhizal fungi and how they could actually protect trees against diseases. And I'd also heard about David Reed's work in the U.K., where he had shown that in the laboratory that trees could be linked together by mycorrhizal fungi and pass carbon between them. So I tested this between birch and fir in my sick plantations.
I planted birch and fir and cedar together in little triplets. ... And I traced how those carbon molecules went back and forth between the birch and fir and they didn't actually end up in the cedars. Because the cedars, they form a different kind of mycorrhizal fungus that doesn't associate with either birch or fir. So [the cedar] wasn't actually in the network with birch and fir, and it picked up hardly any of this isotope.
I knew that birch and fir were sharing carbon below ground — much against the prevailing wisdom that they only compete for light and also that the more that birch shaded Douglas fir, the more carbon was sent over to Douglas fir. So there was a net transfer from birch to fir that was sort of mitigating its shading effect."
I love the idea of re-inventing economics along biological lines- biomimicry. That reminds me of this book
Great book and podcast. I liked this quote from the book (page 78)
"The Serviceberries are networked not only aboveground with partners for pollination and dispersal but belowground with webs of mycorrhizal fungi and other microbial communities that are exchanging resources...we used to assume that these fungi were "stealing" nutrients from the trees, but the closer we look, it seems as if the nutrients might be freely given in a network of reciprocity."
That reminded me of this NPR Fresh Air Interview of another botanist Suzanne Simard
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/05/04/993430007/trees-talk-to-each-other-mother-tree-ecologist-hears-lessons-for-people-too
"At the time] birches were considered weeds. There was a huge program to spray and herbicide these trees to get rid of them because the foresters viewed the birches as competing with Douglas fir, competing for light especially. I was observing in these plantations, though, that when they weeded out the birches, when they sprayed them or cut them, that there was a disease in the forests that would just start spreading like a fire. It was called Armillaria root disease. I really thought, we're doing something wrong here. And so I wanted to know whether the birches were somehow protecting the firs against this disease and that when we cut them out it actually made it way worse....I had learned about these mycorrhizal fungi and how they could actually protect trees against diseases. And I'd also heard about David Reed's work in the U.K., where he had shown that in the laboratory that trees could be linked together by mycorrhizal fungi and pass carbon between them. So I tested this between birch and fir in my sick plantations.
I planted birch and fir and cedar together in little triplets. ... And I traced how those carbon molecules went back and forth between the birch and fir and they didn't actually end up in the cedars. Because the cedars, they form a different kind of mycorrhizal fungus that doesn't associate with either birch or fir. So [the cedar] wasn't actually in the network with birch and fir, and it picked up hardly any of this isotope.
I knew that birch and fir were sharing carbon below ground — much against the prevailing wisdom that they only compete for light and also that the more that birch shaded Douglas fir, the more carbon was sent over to Douglas fir. So there was a net transfer from birch to fir that was sort of mitigating its shading effect."
I love the idea of re-inventing economics along biological lines- biomimicry. That reminds me of this book
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20256907-money-blood-and-revolution