Swamp Thing's 'Parliament of Trees' is Real, According To Science (Sort Of)
Comic books are often viewed as fantastical stories of the imagination, but sometimes, as with DC's Swamp Thing, they can actually predict future scientific discoveries.
Although Swamp Thing's true origins have shifted over the years as DC's universe has constantly been rebooted, the core of who he is as a character has remained roughly the same. Swamp Thing is the avatar of the Green, which is a domain that encompasses all plant life on Earth. Other domains exist as well. The Red governs animal life, the Gray deals with fungi, and the Rot handles death and decay. In the case of the Green, it's ruled by an enigmatic group called the Parliament of Trees, which is pretty much exactly as it sounds. It's an Illuminati-like organization of talking trees that makes decisions on behalf of the Green, such as who the next Swamp Thing will be.
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While the Parliament of Trees is a wild and fantastical concept, a recent article titled «The Wood-Wide Web» in the May 2022 issue of National Geographic talks about a more grounded and real version of the Parliament that exists in nature. It has long been thought that trees in a forest operate as single organisms competing for resources such as water, soil, and sunlight. But scientist Suzanna Simard discovered that forests can actually be connected through vast fungal root systems. Through this pipeline the trees share nutrients, and water, even funneling more to trees that are having trouble acquiring it on their own. In fact, forests may even have what Simard calls «mother trees,» similar to the Parliament, that protect their offspring, going so far as to send out warning signals for distresses like drought and
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