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So, this world I've got in my head is inhabited by plant-beings, all of whom are constantly connected to the Garden, a kind of physical heaven, through an all encompassing web of roots, tree brains, and access points akin to our own internet. Life can be sedentary and connected directly to the roots (like a PC connected by an Ethernet cable), mobile and connected remotely to access points (like a smartphone), or migratory and connected to both on and off (like a laptop). The tree brains are like routers and switches and send the network information where it needs to go. These are not sentient beings and cannot connect to the Garden themselves, but are still alive. Kind of like how people think animals don't have souls (which is dumb because my dogs definitely have souls y'all).

So, big natural worldwide internet. How would this happen? Why would the world evolve into this kind of ecosystem?

I was thinking that the God Tree was the first being to obtain a form of proto-sentience and got bored, so it started spawning new life to connect to like a toddler's brain making new neural pathways and getting ever more complex. I'll word that more elegantly later :P

I would prefer scientific and pseudo-realistic answers, but if you have a mythological answer (like "Legends tell of a...") or a magical one (like "Wizard dude goes bonkers") I'd appreciate that too.

Thanks! ^-^

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  • $\begingroup$ What is it you want to achieve? What would be the benefit of such a system? What kinds of animals and plants are involved? What happens as feedback when a predator kills another animal? $\endgroup$
    – nzaman
    Aug 29, 2016 at 5:57
  • $\begingroup$ See quaking aspen, a clonal colonies of itself but despite being crowned the largest organism on Earth I don't think interlocking roots is any fun at all. $\endgroup$
    – user6760
    Aug 29, 2016 at 9:27
  • $\begingroup$ from 'Avatar' "Dr. Grace Augustine: What we think we know - is that there's some kind of electrochemical communication between the roots of the trees. Like the synapses between neurons. Each tree has ten to the fourth connections to the trees around it, and there are ten to the twelfth trees on Pandora... Selfridge: That's a lot, I'm guessing. Dr. Grace Augustine: That's more connections than the human brain. You get it? It's a network - a global network..." $\endgroup$
    – Joe
    Aug 29, 2016 at 20:32
  • $\begingroup$ @Joe so essentially the world is just a big brain with trees making it work? Because that sounds pretty much like what I was shooting for. Just need help coming up with an origin story that sounds possible. $\endgroup$
    – jonny_5_is_alive
    Aug 30, 2016 at 0:15
  • $\begingroup$ @nzaman I want everything on the planet to be connected to each other via this system of roots and trees. A benefit would be the cultivation of some crazy wisdom with a whole planet contributing. Everything is plant based on the planet, even what we would consider animals. So like the "humans" of this planet are still capable of photosynthesis and all the normal plant stuff. The connection is not mandatory and there are sects that choose to forgo using it, so when something dies, it just stops communicating (like when you turn off your PC the internet keeps working no problem). $\endgroup$
    – jonny_5_is_alive
    Aug 30, 2016 at 0:47

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Well, you should probably start with your God Tree sending out roots and growing more trunks, like the Quaking Aspen tree. The largest living thing on Earth, Pando works this way.

Given that, you can have more species of plant joining up to the root system, although you're going to need to change the definition of a species, or have their immune systems work very differently to Earth ones, to let different types of plant join up. This isn't really going to be evolution, more design by the God Tree.

Your communications means are going to be more like nerves than fibre optics, so the communications are going to be slow as compared to a computer-based Internet.

Allowing mobile organisms to connect and disconnect is going to involve organic plugs and sockets, and transmissions across the gap by chemical diffusion, rather than electrical signals.

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  • $\begingroup$ Actually, some plant immune systems are tolerant of closely related species. That's what lets human gardeners graft a plant of one onto the rootstock of another. rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=443 So maybe on this world it could be all the species in (say) the fig family that can plug in? $\endgroup$
    – DrBob
    Aug 29, 2016 at 15:10
  • $\begingroup$ I did some research on Pando and the clonal colony (it's awesome btw) and it seems to be what I was looking for. Now I just need a reason for something like that to take over the whole world and form symbiotic relationships with every other living thing on the planet. Also @DrBob that grafting thing (also awesome) is pretty close to what I had in mind so thanks for that. Only difference is that everything is in the same family and can plug in. $\endgroup$
    – jonny_5_is_alive
    Aug 30, 2016 at 0:36

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