Would Speak with Plants work on fungi?

Fungi are studied alongside plants, not as plants

The papers that mention fungi do so because fungi share certain biological features with plants, not because they behave like them. One review compares how plants and fungi make xanthones, a class of secondary metabolites—chemical compounds organisms produce that are not essential for basic growth—and finds that the core of the molecule is built differently in the two groups: plants use a pathway involving the shikimate and acetate routes, while fungi and lichens build the xanthone core entirely from polyketide [1]. That is a chemical difference, not a communication channel.

Other work treats fungi as their own kingdom with its own genetics. A review of organellar introns—pieces of genetic material inside energy-producing organelles that splice themselves out—notes that Group I introns are more common in fungal mitochondrial genomes, while Group II introns dominate in plant mitochondria and chloroplasts [2]. Kew's global assessment likewise tracks plant and fungal diversity, threats, and conservation as separate but parallel subjects [3]. In each case, fungi appear because they are a major branch of life, not because they can be addressed the way a plant might be.

What the evidence actually covers

The closest thing to a shared behavior in the supplied papers is biochemistry. One study describes how higher plants and fungi handle oxalic acid accumulation in quite different ways, with plants possessing internal and intercellular mechanisms for sequestering it [4]. Another documents indigenous names and cultural roles for roughly 90 taxa of fungi and plants among several North American groups [5]. Neither describes a method for communicating with either organism.

The xanthone review is explicit about the limits of knowledge: although the organs and tissues that make and store xanthones are known in plants, no information is yet available on their subcellular and cellular localization in fungi and lichens [1]. That gap is about where chemicals are made inside cells, not about whether fungi can receive or send messages. So even the most fungus-focused paper here is silent on the question of talking to them.

Why the question is still worth asking

The question is reasonable because fungi and plants are often grouped together in everyday language and even in research titles. But the supplied evidence shows that grouping is about shared ecology, shared chemistry, or shared conservation concern, not shared communication [3][5]. A method designed for plants would need its own test on fungi before anyone could say whether it works.

What the papers do support is a narrower point: fungi are biologically distinct enough that findings from plants do not automatically transfer. The different xanthone-building route [1], the different intron biases [2], and the different ways of handling oxalic acid [4] all point the same direction. Whether "Speak with Plants" would work on fungi is therefore an open question—one the current evidence does not answer.

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