Journalists get inspired by the subjects that were brought up in the Dutch broadcast 'Zomergasten' by Marleen Stikker. Virginia Groenendijk of the Dutch AD newspaper went in search of the story behind the 'Wood Wide Web' and consulted a number of specialists in the field. A kind of 'fact checking'.
From the article we quote:
"It was something that thousands of TV viewers had never heard of until Sunday night: an underground network of fungi, a Wood Wide Web, and good news, because if trees and fungi help each other and nature is altruistic (unselfish), we may be able to trust that man is also, said Marleen Stikker. Until well after the end of the TV programme, people talked about social media and Monday at the coffee machine. Because is it really so nice underground?
Stikker, director of Waag, a social enterprise that devises technological solutions such as the Fairphone, showed in the three-hour TV program an animation about collaborating trees and plants. With an underground network of fungal threads in and around their roots, trees and plants warn each other of danger, the older 'mother tree' feeds the youngster and gives dying trees their remaining food to vital trees. As a legacy. Altruistic, Stikker thought. "
The experts consulted, such as Jørn Copijn (tree expert and landscape architect), Vincent Merckx (Naturalis) and Paul van Lange (VU), confirm the story. Trees provide information to each other through fungi and help each other, and yes, there are also 'saboteurs' who try to benefit from it.