A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1469 entries
mycorrhiza
A mycorrhiza is the partnership between a fungus and a plant root. The fungus wraps or penetrates the root and extends its threads far out into the soil, reaching water and minerals the root cannot get to, and passes them to the plant. In exchange it receives sugars the plant makes in its leaves. Around ninety percent of land plants do this, and most trees cannot grow properly without it.
Etymology
The word is Greek for fungus-root and was coined in 1885 by the German botanist Albert Bernhard Frank, who was investigating why truffles grew where they did and concluded that the fungus and the tree were living together to mutual benefit. The idea was resisted for decades. Frank also coined the word symbiosis in its modern sense.