KINSHIP. “In that sense the mother trees are providing a favourable environment for the regeneration of their own kin, their own genes. That is one example of forests behaving like a family. There’s other experiments where we’ve shown if we injure that mother tree experimentally that she will also send defence signals out to other seedlings around her.”
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/futuretense/the-underestimated-power-of-plants/7227008