Monika’s Mother-Tree seedlings transmitted more carbon to kin than strangers, as Brian and Amanda had found. But unlike the earlier study, where we’d only detected carbon moving into the mycorrhizal fungi of the kin seedlings, Monika now found that it went straight into their long leaders. The Mother-Tree seedlings flooded the mycorrhizal network with their carbon energy, and it advanced into the needles of her kin, her sustenance soon within them. Et voilà! The data also showed that injury, whether by western spruce budworm or the shears, induced the Mother-Tree seedlings to transfer even
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