Outing to Grafenberg Forest: all your senses awakened, a real forest internet network

On Tuesday November 28, we went to the Grafenberg forest.
We had a guide who explained lots of things to us, and with whom we also played games.
The guide explained that a gigantic network of microscopic fungi enabled the trees to exchange information.
He called this network the Internet of the forest.

The “mycorrhizae” fungi that can even be spotted with the naked eye under the dead leaves of trees, in a beech grove for example, are so many little “cables” by which the trees are linked to each other.

Mycorrhiza, from the Greek myco, “fungus” and rhiza, “root”, is a term introduced in 1885 by botanist Albert Bernhard Frank.
It defines the symbiotic relationship that exists between tree roots and the long underground threads woven by mycelia, which resemble, if you map them underground, our world wide web.
That’s why biologists call it the wood-wide web.

Thus, far from hindering each other, fungi and trees live in harmony and have developed a form of mutual aid that leads us to believe that one would not live without the other, and vice versa, or with the greatest difficulty.
This is because they exchange organic matter and minerals, with mushrooms drawing on the water captured and stored by tree roots.

This underground network through which trees exchange information was revealed to the world by German forester Peter Wohlleben in his best-selling book “
The Secret Life of Trees
.

We looked at lots of trees that were over 100 years old, and discovered 5 different trees: chestnut, maple, oak, beech and chestnut.
We collected the leaves and observed them.

We also took a closer look at the fruit of certain trees, such as chestnut, beech, chestnut and oak.

We also played games and, for example, got together in teams of 3 to search the forest for green things, red things, pointy things, round things, things that make music etc…

We particularly enjoyed the game we played in pairs: one of us had to blindfold himself to be able to touch and feel the tree trunks.

If you were blindfolded, you had to trust your partner, who guided you through the forest to discover the different trees.

We learned that the Grafenberg forest was not a natural forest, but one planted by man.

Finally, at the end of the tour, our guide took us on a tour of the Wildpark, where we got to feed animals like deer and hinds.
They loved the apples and carrots!
We also saw raccoons, a polecat and squirrels that had been taken in because of an injury.
The squirrels were in a cage, but they could move from one cage to another thanks to a tunnel.

We really enjoyed this outing, learning a lot about trees, forests and animals.