Prof. Suzanne Simard (UBC) talks about Mother trees. The largest tree in an area is the mother tree who communicates with all the other trees in the area (even ones of different species) via it’s root systems and the micro-organisms (fungus, bacteria etc) that helps to provide nutrients for the trees. These trees have massive networks and cooperation abilities – sharing of nutrients and information with each other.

These networks are a lot like our neural networks which send messages back and forth and build upon each others information systems. Information can actually be passed down to the next generation of trees via this network. In fact ‘dead’ trees still have this network–moving their legacy to the next generation via their root networks before they completely collapse.