In the past 10 years the idea that trees communicate with and look after each other has gained widespread currency. But have these claims outstripped the evidence? …Peter Wohlleben’s bestseller, The Hidden Life of Trees, has inaugurated a new tree discourse, which sees them not as inert objects but intelligent subjects [with] thoughts and desires that converse via fungi that connect their roots “like fibre-optic internet cables”. … In 1997, a Canadian forest ecologist named Suzanne Simard co-published a study in Nature describing resources passing between trees, apparently via fungi. …The title of the article was almost impeccably dry – “Net transfer of carbon between ectomycorrhizal tree species in the field”…The journal’s editors sensed promise. They made it Nature’s cover story, commissioned a foreword by a leading botanist, and affixed an indelible pun: this was the “wood-wide web”. It wasn’t Simard’s metaphor, but she has pounced on it.