I was reading Otherlands by Thomas Halliday which talks about how fungi and very early plants formed mutually beneficial relationships in the beginning stages of life on land, and through these relationships the land became hospitable for larger life forms, and i was so so struck by how the collaboration and reciprocity Kimmerer talks about in this chapter literally laid the groundwork for the planet as we know it???

I have always adored Kimmerer’s explanation of mast fruiting and mycorrhizae in "The Council of Pecans" (her book was actually my first introduction to the concept!)—

Some studies of mast fruiting have suggested that the mechanism for synchrony comes not through the air, but underground. The trees in a forest are often interconnected by subterranean networks of mycorrhizae, fungal strands that inhabit tree roots. The mycorrhizal symbiosis enables the fungi to forage for mineral nutrients in the soil and deliver them to the tree in exchange for carbohydrates. The mycorrhizae may form fungal bridges between individual trees, so that all the trees in a forest are connected. These fungal networks appear to redistribute the wealth of carbohydrates from tree to tree. A kind of Robin Hood, they take from the rich and give to the poor so that all the trees arrive at the same carbon surplus at the same time. They weave a web of reciprocity, of giving and taking. In this way, the trees all act as one because the fungi have connected them. Through unity, survival. All flourishing is mutual. Soil, fungus, tree, squirrel, boy—all are beneficiaries of reciprocity.

And from Otherlands chapter 12 “Collaboration” about Rhynie, Scotland, UK in the Devonian (407 million years ago)—

The land, too, is hostile, but plants have begun to colonize inland…By collaborating and competing, parasitizing and preying, functional communities have even been established away from the safety of the water, and the amount of habitable land is increasing. Plants are growing big by entering into deals with fungi, fungi are growing bigger by co-opting cyanobacteria, and both arthropods and fungi are helping to break down dead organisms, making soil in which new plants can grow.

To photosynthesize properly requires a steady and substantial supply of water, and the fungus is a willing trader. It supplies the plant with water and nutrients from the soil, taking a tithe of sugars produced by photosynthesis. In total, mycorrhizae are responsible for helping source the nutrients for about 80 per cent of all modern species. That they are present so early in the evolutionary history suggests that this relationship is not just ecologically important but fundamental to the development of life on land.

…and once dead the plants, of no further use to their fungal symbionts, decay. Other fungi, such as ascomycetes, invade through the relaxed stomata to digest the plant from within. The fungi, by extracting the last nutrients from the plant, are developing some of the earliest soils. In time, this will create a softer and better substrate in which plants can grow larger…

From mutualisms to parasitisms, the conquering of a new environment does not occur in isolation. What began as an inhospitable and unpromising landscape is now teeming with life. For the next 400 million years, this planet will be a plant world, a fungal world, an arthropod world. The big beasts that emerge later, everything that has ever walked or crawled, is dependent on the innovations of communities like Rhynie. Root and hypha grip and sink ever deeper, interlocked as dancers’ fingers, into the yielding rock. Together, they will change everything.

This adds so much to the knowledge I had originally gained from Kimmerer’s work. “All flourishing is mutual”, she wrote, and what Halliday’s book seems to say is that mutual flourishing begets more flourishing. Life as we know it now all stems from the reciprocity of fungi and lichens and now-extinct plants, thriving and thriving together in the harsh Devonian landscape.

I found a typo. I kinda love when that happens in books, honestly. It reminds me that even published books can have mistakes. Across the page turn it says “who did think she was”.