VISUAL ARCHIVE / IMAGE STORY
The Unmapped Network Below
Thismia depends on fungi, but the pictured thread-by-thread network was not measured at this site.
Fungal threads and plant roots meet in the soil in this conceptual image. The threads do not depict a mapped network at the Thai discovery site. AI-generated illustration.
THE OBSERVATION
What we can actually see.
Thismia belongs to a mycoheterotrophic lineage, whose plants obtain carbon through fungal associations. The identity and connectivity of every fungus and neighboring root at the Thai discovery site are not established by the flower’s description. A general biological relationship is different from a mapped local network.
THE ILLUSTRATION
What the artwork imagines.
Bright, orderly threads create a legible underground pathway. Their positions, thicknesses, and links to other plants were invented to explain the possibility of exchange, not traced with field instruments beneath this particular flower.
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED ARTICLE
The story that inspired it.
The article uses the hidden dependence to ask what a flower can draw from a forest without photosynthesizing for itself.
Read The Flower That Lives Off the ForestCHECK THE RECORD
The image interprets the research below. Follow the original work for the measurements and limits behind the scene.
Original Thismia daemona species descriptionOTHER IMAGE STORIES
The Flower and the Hidden Fungi
The Flower in the Leaf Litter
The Mark Shared by Titan and Pluto