Here is an interesting video about root networks of trees, fungally empowered that allow for a transferrence of material between the network.
The arborescent is contrasted in Deleuze and Guattari with the rhizomatic.
“… It is odd how the tree has dominated Western reality and all of Western thought… Thought is not arborescent, and the brain is not a rooted or ramified matter … A rhizome as subterranean stem is absolutely different from roots and radicles … Let us summarize the principal characteristics of a rhizome: unlike trees or their roots, the rhizome connects any point to any other point, and its traits are not necessarily linked to traits of the same nature … The rhizome includes the best and the worst: potato and couchgrass, or the weed.”
Video and quote cribbed, but its good to note that the myceleum is itself considered rhizomatic and if in this symbiotic characterisation trees are fundamentally included, then the necessarily more territorialised flows of the arborescent, need be understood in further context of intensificatory rhizomatic formations (the idea of intelligent locational resilliency and capacity).
What this video highlights so well is the inclusive and collectivised nature of the network, wherein the collective benefit is accentuated across capacity and space in bringing together as a network, the reach and resources of the space, shared as necessary (and covering different kinds of organism). There is yet also hint of a deeper kind of sharing involving ‘mother trees’ and the end of their time, but the specificities of such a thing seem remaining unknown.
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reflectivewavelengths 