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The role of mushrooms

The biological reality of our forests is often still ignored: trees do not exist in the forest as autonomous entities. They are actually made up of two types of organisms: the plant and the community of fungi intimately associated with the roots of the plant. Trees and mushrooms together form connected organs, “half root and half mushroom” called “mycorrhizae.”

Furthermore, we now know that the tree cannot live without its fungal partners. Why? Because associated mushrooms recycle the mineral elements of organic matter and allow the tree to tap into this nutrient pool. The proper functioning of the forest depends on the presence of a large variety of mushrooms, each of which has a specific and complementary relationship to the diversity of native species in a stand, the various ages of trees, the presence of dead trees or rich forest litter or complex vertical structure, etc. Similarly, the way the soil functions directly influences the functioning of mycorrhizal mushrooms and therefore, tree nutrition.