full transcript
From the Ted Talk by Suzanne Simard: How trees talk to each other
Unscramble the Blue Letters
So now I want to talk about the science. How were paper birch and Douglas fir communicating? Well, it turns out they were conversing not only in the language of crabon but also nitrogen and phosphorus and wetar and defense signals and allele chemicals and hormones -- information. And you know, I have to tell you, before me, scientists had thought that this belowground msutuiialtc sbiimsyos called a mycorrhiza was involved. Mycorrhiza literally means "fungus root." You see their riduertvpoce organs when you walk through the forest. They're the mushrooms. The mushrooms, though, are just the tip of the iceberg, because coming out of those smtes are fungal threads that form a mluciyem, and that mycelium infects and colonizes the roots of all the trees and plants. And where the fungal cells interact with the root cells, there's a tadre of carbon for nutrients, and that fungus gets those nutrients by growing through the soil and coating every soil particle. The web is so dense that there can be hundreds of kilometers of mycelium under a slngie fsettoop. And not only that, that mycelium connects different individuals in the feorst, iauivinldds not only of the same species but between species, like birch and fir, and it works kind of like the Internet.
Open Cloze
So now I want to talk about the science. How were paper birch and Douglas fir communicating? Well, it turns out they were conversing not only in the language of ______ but also nitrogen and phosphorus and _____ and defense signals and allele chemicals and hormones -- information. And you know, I have to tell you, before me, scientists had thought that this belowground ___________ _________ called a mycorrhiza was involved. Mycorrhiza literally means "fungus root." You see their ____________ organs when you walk through the forest. They're the mushrooms. The mushrooms, though, are just the tip of the iceberg, because coming out of those _____ are fungal threads that form a ________, and that mycelium infects and colonizes the roots of all the trees and plants. And where the fungal cells interact with the root cells, there's a _____ of carbon for nutrients, and that fungus gets those nutrients by growing through the soil and coating every soil particle. The web is so dense that there can be hundreds of kilometers of mycelium under a ______ ________. And not only that, that mycelium connects different individuals in the ______, ___________ not only of the same species but between species, like birch and fir, and it works kind of like the Internet.
Solution
- mutualistic
- symbiosis
- individuals
- carbon
- mycelium
- trade
- forest
- water
- single
- stems
- reproductive
- footstep
Original Text
So now I want to talk about the science. How were paper birch and Douglas fir communicating? Well, it turns out they were conversing not only in the language of carbon but also nitrogen and phosphorus and water and defense signals and allele chemicals and hormones -- information. And you know, I have to tell you, before me, scientists had thought that this belowground mutualistic symbiosis called a mycorrhiza was involved. Mycorrhiza literally means "fungus root." You see their reproductive organs when you walk through the forest. They're the mushrooms. The mushrooms, though, are just the tip of the iceberg, because coming out of those stems are fungal threads that form a mycelium, and that mycelium infects and colonizes the roots of all the trees and plants. And where the fungal cells interact with the root cells, there's a trade of carbon for nutrients, and that fungus gets those nutrients by growing through the soil and coating every soil particle. The web is so dense that there can be hundreds of kilometers of mycelium under a single footstep. And not only that, that mycelium connects different individuals in the forest, individuals not only of the same species but between species, like birch and fir, and it works kind of like the Internet.
Frequently Occurring Word Combinations
ngrams of length 2
collocation |
frequency |
mother trees |
7 |
carbon dioxide |
4 |
mama grizzly |
4 |
douglas fir |
4 |
hub trees |
4 |
dioxide gas |
3 |
geiger counter |
3 |
complex systems |
3 |
mycorrhizal networks |
3 |
connect trees |
2 |
poor dog |
2 |
pine seedling |
2 |
seedling root |
2 |
plastic bags |
2 |
stable isotope |
2 |
paper birch |
2 |
defense signals |
2 |
mother tree |
2 |
mycorrhizal network |
2 |
future stresses |
2 |
ngrams of length 3
collocation |
frequency |
carbon dioxide gas |
3 |
pine seedling root |
2 |
Important Words
- allele
- belowground
- birch
- called
- carbon
- cells
- chemicals
- coating
- colonizes
- coming
- communicating
- connects
- conversing
- defense
- dense
- douglas
- fir
- footstep
- forest
- form
- fungal
- fungus
- growing
- hormones
- hundreds
- iceberg
- individuals
- infects
- information
- interact
- internet
- involved
- kilometers
- kind
- language
- literally
- means
- mushrooms
- mutualistic
- mycelium
- mycorrhiza
- nitrogen
- nutrients
- organs
- paper
- particle
- phosphorus
- plants
- reproductive
- root
- roots
- science
- scientists
- signals
- single
- soil
- species
- stems
- symbiosis
- talk
- thought
- threads
- tip
- trade
- trees
- turns
- walk
- water
- web
- works