headspace-hotel
What if plants are not peaceful socialists sharing resources OR aggressive warmongers competing with and poisoning each other, but a secret third thing: Unknowable without the simplifying lenses of anthropomorphism
headspace-hotel
Like yes, the "mother tree" thing is anthropomorphizing, and it's still inaccurate to view the mycorrhizal network sending resources as tree altruism because put simply, we don't know where agency resides in the mycorrhizal network system.
Or what agency even MEANS in this context.
So we can show that resources move from full grown trees to saplings but we don't know that the full grown trees are "sending" the resources. Maybe the fungus is doing it! Maybe the baby trees are just like "gimme!" Or maybe it's stupid to view them as independent things at all, like debating whether you pet a cat with your brain or your hands—maybe the forest is better understood as one giant superorganism!
And still, I will bite anyone who dismisses the "mother tree" model on the basis of being anthropomorphizing, because describing plants as "waging war" or "advertising services on a market" IS ALSO ANTHROPOMORPHIZING, and nobody gets pissy about that because it doesn't challenge their pre-existing assumptions.