What makes a forest a forest?

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Why these robot blocks can help you see everything in a new way.

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At first glance...

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Just a group of trees, right?

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According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, a forest is just a precise ratio of big trees on a bit of land.

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With that definition it’s easy to think you know what a forest is.

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If we dig a little deeper, we’ll find a hidden world that will reshape how we think about forests.

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Principles for better thinking.

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Everything starts with interactions.

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People often think of plants as competitors – slowly fighting for water, food, and sunlight.

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But forest isn’t a battlefield – it’s a natural economy built on simple interactions.

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Recent scientific studies have revealed a hidden network beneath the forest floor.

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This network allows trees and plants to interact – to share food and water and even communicate with each other.

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The network is called the Mycorrhizal network. It’s a web of fungi that connects tree and plant roots.

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The network exchanges nutrients and energy between plants – the strength of one is a result of the many.

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We’ve only just started to study how it works, but it reveals that forests are much more than the trees we see.

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Our perception of a forest changes when we can see the source of the forest’s interactions.

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Simple interactions can give rise to bigger things.

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Finding the interactions inside any system will help you learn more how the system works.

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Seek the source of every interaction.

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Or play with...

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