Suzanne Simard is an ecologist, who has spent 30 years studying forests. She believes that trees have a language of their own.”You see, underground there is this other world, a world of infinite biological pathways that connect trees and allow them to communicate and allow the forest to behave as though it’s a single organism”, said Suzanne.

If you look at a forest, all you can see is trees battling for the sunlight, water or nutrients they need. The winner takes what he can and the loser struggles to survive. But, in recent years, a scientific discovery changed the ways people perceived the forest. In reality, the trees are like a “big family”, they help each other survive by passing nutrients, warning others of potential dangers and supporting their big community.

Peter Wohlleben, a German forester and author of “The hidden life of trees”, even refers to them as “old friends”, referring to their close connexions.

Little trees are set in the shadows of the giant ones. They sometimes don’t get enough of what they need to survive, but in the ground, there is a vast root system supporting them. At the end of these roots are symbiotic fungi, called mycorrhizae. They have countless branching that takes a lot more space than the roots, this makes up the mycelium. It also connects the other roots of other trees together, this is called the mycorrhizal networks. Through that, the fungi can pass resources and signalling molecules to other trees.

The bigger a tree is, the more connexions they have. So even if you cut just one tree in the forest it could become a big problem for the other trees around.