Plants benefit from Community too.
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Over the last few years I’ve developed what I can only describe as ‘green fingers’, I have a new found love growing things, so I apologise if this subject heads in the direction of boredom. The most interesting thing I’ve come to understand recently is that whilst plants compete in the same space, they also help each other, the stronger the plant community the more resistant they are to drought and disease. For example, mycorrhizae is a fungi that trades sugar and other minerals with plants roots in a beneficial symbiosis. Studies suggest that newly emerging seedlings in a wood where light is at a premium can benefit from small exchanges of nutrients via the mycorrhizal networks.
[quote]McGuire (2007), working with the monodominant tree Dicymbe corymbosa in Guyana demonstrated that seedlings with access to mycorrhizal networks had higher survival, number of leaves, and height than seedlings isolated from the ectomycorrhizal networks.[/quote]
Whilst we are on the subject of plants, anyone else here grow Chillies?
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It’s almost like plants being social and think about the other species. How do plants actually provide their neighbors with the sugar?
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I don’t fully understand it, but from what I can gather, there is a network of fungi connected to the plants roots. The plants give up carbon in the form of sugars to the fungi and get other nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus in return in a symbiotic relationship. So I don’t think plants trade carbon with other plants, but by supporting the fungi network the fungi support all plants connected to the network, giving them a greater access to nutrients than if grown in isolation, enabling other plants to support more leaves to take advantage of lower light levels. Also, there’s evidence that basic communication takes place via the fungi and the soil web capable of warning of aphid attacks.
[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22462855]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22462855[/url]
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[quote name=“MrWyrm” post=“49143” timestamp=“1388674398”]
So I don’t think plants trade carbon with other plants, but by supporting the fungi network the fungi support all plants connected to the network, giving them a greater access to nutrients than if grown in isolation, enabling other plants to support more leaves to take advantage of lower light levels. Also, there’s evidence that basic communication takes place via the fungi and the soil web capable of warning of aphid attacks.[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22462855]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22462855[/url]
[/quote]Man, we’re just being plants here! This is a Feathercoin, Blockchain and Link description!
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I’d thought similar. Pretty cool. :D
