Vampire Tree

You may think vampires are limited to tales of undead humans drinking blood, but you might be surprised to learn about one peculiar so-called vampire tree found in the forests of New Zealand. Scientists have found vampire-like behavior in the stump of a living kauri tree. The tree had extended its roots into an interweaving community of surrounding trees, forming what the study authors called a 'superorganism.' The vampire tree grafts its roots onto dozens or even hundreds of other trees, sucking in water and nutrients at night that the other trees spent all day collecting. Without the water and nutrients drained from its neighbors, the kauri tree stump would most certainly be dead. It lacks green tissue of its own, according to study co-author Sebastian Leuzinger. As for why the host trees don't cut off the leaching stump, Leuzinger and his colleagues theorized the vampire tree's superorganism acts as a network of water and nutrients, taking turns pumping resources to one another. Leuzinger and Bader went on to uncover the stump's vampiric nature by measuring the flow of water in the stump and the surrounding trees of the same species. In effect, they found a strong negative correlation in the water flow between the trees. In other words, though genetically different, they were sharing resources thanks to grafted roots recognizing nearby root tissue. Researchers are looking for more types of kauri tree stumps to further study the formation of root systems between stumps and living trees. Should they discover more vampire trees and the scope of the research expands, a better understanding of such resource-sharing superorganisms may be significant to the longevity of forests.