Just finished the course on endophytes and it reminded me of a question I have been returning to recently.
Mentor grafting has been getting a lot of attention later. I wonder if endophyte transfer might be another possible benefit of this kind of technique? Are there endophytes which don’t readily transfer between plants via root hairs (thinking the long fungal endophytes might fall into this category).
That article goes into root grafting, which was something I didn’t realize trees in the wild did. That explains a lot! I’d heard they sometimes grafted stems together naturally, but I’ve very rarely see that happen in the wild. If it happens a lot with roots underground, however, that would explain why most plant species can do it just fine, even though it’s unusual for humans to notice it.