Laser scan of a root with plant in blue and mycorrhizal fungi in red. The spongy fungal structures are arbuscules (‘little trees’) — the site of exchange between fungus and plant. Plants supply their fungal partners with as much as 30% of the energy they produce in photosynthesis; fungi supply plants with nutrients and defend them from disease. Much of life on land depends on these structures. A proportion of the minerals in your body will have passed through an arbuscule at some point.

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The plant is Gymnosiphon suaveolens, a non-photosynthetic species which depends entirely on its fungal partners for its nutrition. The sample was collected in a lowland tropical forest in Panama. 

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The scan was made using confocal laser scanning microscopy with differential staining of plant and fungal tissues.

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Video © Merlin Sheldrake