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

  1. mutualistic
  2. symbiosis
  3. individuals
  4. carbon
  5. mycelium
  6. trade
  7. forest
  8. water
  9. single
  10. stems
  11. reproductive
  12. 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

  1. allele
  2. belowground
  3. birch
  4. called
  5. carbon
  6. cells
  7. chemicals
  8. coating
  9. colonizes
  10. coming
  11. communicating
  12. connects
  13. conversing
  14. defense
  15. dense
  16. douglas
  17. fir
  18. footstep
  19. forest
  20. form
  21. fungal
  22. fungus
  23. growing
  24. hormones
  25. hundreds
  26. iceberg
  27. individuals
  28. infects
  29. information
  30. interact
  31. internet
  32. involved
  33. kilometers
  34. kind
  35. language
  36. literally
  37. means
  38. mushrooms
  39. mutualistic
  40. mycelium
  41. mycorrhiza
  42. nitrogen
  43. nutrients
  44. organs
  45. paper
  46. particle
  47. phosphorus
  48. plants
  49. reproductive
  50. root
  51. roots
  52. science
  53. scientists
  54. signals
  55. single
  56. soil
  57. species
  58. stems
  59. symbiosis
  60. talk
  61. thought
  62. threads
  63. tip
  64. trade
  65. trees
  66. turns
  67. walk
  68. water
  69. web
  70. works