Dr. Ted's Chunky Style Myco-bits
Mycorrhizae and the Plant Community
Ted St. John, Ph.D.
Endomycorrhizal fungi, and to a lesser extent ectomycorrhizal
fungi, are quite non-specific for host plants. In other words, you do not
need a "right" mycorrhizal fungus for each plant species, except that
an endomycorrhizal plant needs and endomycorrhizal fungus. One consequence
of this non-specificity is that the same mycorrhizal fungus can interconnect a
number of unrelated plant species.
The interconnected plants are, to some extent, suggestive of the old ecological
idea (largely discredited among ecologists) that the plant community is a sort
of "super organism." The interconnected plants share a nutrient
uptake system, and jointly contribute to its energetic support.
In a natural ecosystem, the network interconnects a number of
plant species, and also consists of between one and two dozen fungal species,
each with its own network, either patchy in distribution or interwoven through
other networks.