Mycorrhiza
/ˌmaɪkəˈraɪzə/noun
The partnership between a fungus and a plant root, in which the fungus supplies water and minerals and the plant pays in sugar.
The Greek roots
Literally: “fungus root”
The story of the word
Albert Bernhard Frank coined Mykorrhiza in 1885, after the Prussian agriculture ministry asked him to work out how to farm truffles. He never solved truffles. He described instead the arrangement running under most of the plants on earth, fungal threads feeding the root phosphorus and water and being paid in sugar, and it turns out the majority of land plant families do it. The independent root is the exception.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → German → English
- First recorded
- 1885
Same family
In a sentence
Seedlings grown in sterile compost lack the mycorrhiza they would have picked up in a forest.
Heavy phosphate fertiliser suppresses mycorrhiza, so the plant stops paying for a service it no longer needs.