James Stewart
speaker
4,486 appearances
22 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard 5d ago
James Stewart’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 17 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 3.
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Astrum Space · The Science Fact You've Been Taught for Years Is a Lie | Astrum Earth · 28 Apr 2026
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between ectomycorrhizal tree species in the field, which is fairly unassuming considering the content of this paper.
In essence, Simard was claiming to have observed the transfer of carbon between seedlings of paper birch and Douglas fir in the field through a shared fungal connection between their root systems.
Not just any old fungus can form a connection with trees.
This privilege is mostly reserved for mycorrhizal fungi.
The term mycorrhizal fungi refers to a broad group of species that have been forming beneficial partnerships with plants for over 450 million years.
Their name comes from the Greek myx meaning fungi and rhiza meaning root, which is accurate because these fungi form their relationships with the roots of their plant partners, extending the reach of the plants through a fungal network called the mycelium.
These networks are so vast, it's estimated that every one kilogram of soil can contain up to 200 kilometers of fungal strands.
And some individual fungi can extend across a hundred square meters.
With this impressive reach, the fungus can help its plant friends to absorb more nutrients from the soil in exchange for some of their sugars.
This is an example of symbiosis, because both parties get something good out of the relationship.
Now, scientists already knew about this network at the time of Simard's research.
All the way back in 1885, the German plant biologist Albert Bernard Frank wrote a paper describing the symbiosis between plant roots and mycorrhizal fungi in Prussian truffle districts.
And throughout the 20th century, scientists had documented the transfer of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus through fungal connections in lab experiments.
But what made Simard's discovery so exciting was that she claimed to have seen trees using this network to transfer carbon out in the forest, which was a big deal.
In the forest there are far more variables at play, some of which are near impossible to replicate in a lab study.
anything that you observe in these natural environments is a far more realistic snapshot of what is really going on.
So it's often the final piece of evidence needed to prove a theory.
This was no different for the theory of a woods wide web.
Scientists knew it existed and had some idea of what it could do.
But for many, Simard's research provided definitive evidence that these ideas hold true for real world habitats.
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