Wood Wide Web: Visualising the Fungal Network That Connects Trees

Merlin Sheldrake’s book introduced me to the wood wide web. But what made the concept stick was the science behind it. Beiler et al., 2010, mapping out the actual topology of fungal networks that connect tree roots underground — which trees were connected to which, through which fungi, what the information flow looked like.

The network was so intricate, so deliberately structured, that the first reaction was disbelief. It looked designed. It looked intentional. It looked like the forest had built a communication system.

The mycorrhizal network is real. Trees genuinely are connected underground through fungal webs. Nutrients flow. Signals flow. A tree under attack from insects can trigger defences in neighboring trees it’s connected to. The whole thing reads like fantasy until you see the science.

But here’s the problem: papers are static. A topology diagram on a page doesn’t communicate the depth, the interconnectedness, the sheer complexity of what’s actually happening below the soil surface. You can’t explore it. You can’t see what happens if a key hub node goes down. You can’t trace the path from one tree to another.

That’s why I built Wood Wide Web.

The Missed Opportunity in Static Visualization

The data from the Beiler studies existed. The network topology was known. But because it lived in academic papers, most people would never interact with it. They’d see a diagram, read the caption, move on.

I wanted to build something where you could actually explore the network. Scroll through it. See the connections emerge as you scrolled, like the forest was revealing itself as you descended from the canopy to the soil. Interactive, not just informative.

The technical side was straightforward: React for the interface, Three.js for 3D rendering, Vite for the build. The harder part was mapping the real network data onto the 3D space in a way that actually told the story.

Building the Visualization

The Beiler data is a network graph — nodes are trees, edges are fungal connections. I embedded that in a 3D scene where you scroll down through layers of the forest. At the top, you see the trees as they appear above ground. As you scroll down, the view descends. You see the roots. Then you see the fungal networks beginning to appear. Then the full interconnected mycorrhizal web.

Each node in the network is a tree. Each edge is a fungal pathway. As you scroll, the geometry of the visualization transforms — nodes move, connections reveal, the whole thing animates to show the journey from surface to soil.

Three.js handles the 3D geometry. D3.js handles the layout and force simulation to arrange the nodes in 3D space so the network is readable. React wraps it all and handles scroll-driven animation triggers.

The rendering is performant enough to run on a standard browser without requiring a powerful GPU. That was important — I wanted this to be accessible, not a technical demo that only worked on high-end machines.

What It Actually Shows

Wood Wide Web visualises the actual mycorrhizal network from the Beiler study. You scroll down through the forest, starting with trees as you’d see them above ground. As you descend, roots appear, then the fungal web connecting everything. Each connection is real. Each tree is placed according to the actual network topology.

There are six different fungal species rendered in different colors, each playing different roles in the network. Some are generalists connecting multiple tree species. Some are specialists on single host species. The visualization shows which fungal species mediate which connections.

You can hover over a tree to highlight its connections. You can see which other trees it’s networked to, which fungi it relies on, what its ecosystem looks like. The whole thing is an interactive exploration of a real underground network.

The Story Structure

This is where the design got interesting. Most data visualizations are either static (a chart) or exploratory (here’s a dataset, explore it). Wood Wide Web is neither. It’s a story told through visualization.

The scroll-driven narrative structure guides you through the experience. It’s a chosen-your-own-adventure format, but vertical — as you descend through the layers of the forest, the story unfolds. Different narrative paths exist depending on which trees you interact with, which fungal connections you follow.

The goal was to make scientific data feel like discovery, not like reading a report.

Why This Matters

Mycorrhizal networks are real and they’re important to ecosystem health. They’re also almost completely invisible to anyone not specifically studying them. A paper reaches maybe a few thousand researchers. A visualization can reach millions.

More importantly, making the invisible visible changes how people think about forests. Forests aren’t just collections of individual trees competing for resources. They’re networked systems where cooperation is built into the substrate. Understanding that changes your perspective on conservation, on forest management, on what it actually means to protect an ecosystem.

Wood Wide Web isn’t just a visualization. It’s an attempt to translate scientific knowledge into experiential understanding. You’re not just reading that trees are connected. You’re watching the connections emerge as you scroll.

The Broader Lens

There’s a category of knowledge that only becomes compelling when it’s interactive. Static text can describe quantum superposition. An interactive visualization where you can collapse and uncollapse wave functions multiple times makes it stick.

The mycorrhizal network is the same. The paper is correct. The diagram is accurate. But they’re inert. An interactive, scrollable, explorable visualization of the same data creates an experience. And experience shapes understanding in a way that facts alone never can.

Wood Wide Web is available as a web app.