Trees can recognise their "children" and send them more nutrients.
Why it is true
Through the underground fungal network, mother trees identify the roots of their own offspring and redirect more carbon and defences to them, ensuring their progeny survives in the forest.
Source: Forest Ecology
Would you rather be asked first?
This is the reading side of the site, so the answer is in the sentence above — that is the whole point of it. Test yourself works the other way round: the question comes on its own, and the fact and the explanation only appear once you have answered.
Related facts
Trees can communicate with each other and share nutrients through an underground fungal network.
Pando, a grove of aspens in Utah, is a single organism with about 47,000 trunks joined by the same root system.
The Tree of Ténéré, in Niger, was the most isolated tree in the world until it was knocked down by a lorry in 1973.
The fruits of the sandbox tree, Hura crepitans, explode with a bang and fling their seeds more than 40 metres.
