History Main / IntelligentForest

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'': Athel Loren, the forest where the Wood Elves live, is so thoroughly steeped in magic that it's a living, aware thing in its own right, and conscious of everything that goes on beneath its canopy. While the Wood Elves are themselves fully capable of defending their home from intrusions, Athel Loren itself actively fights back against attacks, twisting paths, moving trees and directing [[NatureSpirit dryads]], [[{{Treants}} treemen]] and [[OurDragonsAreDifferent forest dragons]] to its defense.

These neural roots can be considered both a GeniusLoci and HiveMind, being both a sentient location and a meld of hundreds or thousands of individual minds. It might explain why the jungle or forest [[EverythingIsTryingToKillYou is trying to kill you]]; the whole thing's an intelligent environment and doesn't take kindly to trespassers. If it's just a single intelligent tree, its a WiseTree.

* In ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'', there's the Foggy Swamp, a huge habitat in the southwestern Earth Kingdom reportedly made from one central tree. The "forest" itself seems to have a mind of its own, too, though whether it's sentient or not is mysterious.

* The students in ''WesternAnimation/TheMagicSchoolBusRidesAgain'' are temporarily transformed into an example in an episode about trees' interconnections with fungal mycorrhizae, as discussed under Real Life below.

* ''Manga/OnePiece:'' the Whole Cake Island arc is set in Totto Land, which is known for {{animate inanimate object}}s and looking straight out of a fairy tale. The main island has "Seducing Woods", where the trees are alive and can talk like people. Like many things in that island, this forest is revealed to be nasty: the trees secretly try to make any intruders lost in them by moving around, confusing their directions.

[[caption-width-right:350:"Not that intelligent. I played ''TabletopGame/TrivialPursuit'' with them, and they were all [[IncrediblyLamePun stumped]]."]]

-->-- '''Molimo, Maro-Sorcerer''', ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering''

* ''Manga/OnePiece:'' the Whole Cake Island arc is set in "Totto Land", Big Mom's country which are known for AnimateInanimateObjects and looking straight out of a fairy tale. One of the places in the island is "Seducing Woods", where the trees are alive and can talk like people. Like many things in that island, this forest is revealed to be nasty: the trees secretly try to make any intruders lost in them by moving around, confusing their directions.

* In ''VideoGame/SidMeiersAlphaCentauri'', the Xenofungus serves as a hindrance to terraforming and a hiding place for the rapacious Mind Worms. It also turns out to be a vestigial neural network housing a fledgling sentience, one which has achieved near-godhood on multiple occasions in Planet's history only to inadvertently trigger mass extinctions which resulted in its inevitable collapse. The human factions can not only aid the Planetmind in its ascension, but use it to achieve their own transhuman evolution.

* The Mass from ''VideoGame/{{Submerged}}: Hidden Depths'' is an underwater variant: a sprawling network of vegetative tendrils that extend throughout the sunken city. Although its intelligence may be too alien for proper communication, it's self-aware enough to solicit Miku's help via its "gift", and [[spoiler: to ''brutally'' avenge the theft and torture of its Seeds]].

* The Mass from ''[[VideoGame/{{Submerged}}: Hidden Depths]]'' is an underwater variant: a sprawling network of vegetative tendrils that extend throughout the sunken city. Although its intelligence may be too alien for proper communication, it's self-aware enough to solicit Miku's help via its "gift", and [[spoiler: to ''brutally'' avenge the theft and torture of its Seeds]].

* The Mass from ''[[VideoGame/{{Submergede}}: Hidden Depths]]'' is an underwater variant: a sprawling network of vegetative tendrils that extend throughout the sunken city. Although its intelligence may be too alien for proper communication, it's self-aware enough to solicit Miku's help via its "gift", and [[spoiler: to ''brutally'' avenge the theft and torture of its Seeds]].

[[folder:Webcomics]]
* In ''Webcomic/KevinAndKell'', the tree that Lindesfarne and Fenton live in has mentioned that [[https://kevinandkell.com/2017/kk1127.html all plant life can communicate via an interconnected root system]]. Apparently, [[https://kevinandkell.com/2017/kk0105.html it somehow works for potted plants]] as well.

[[folder:Webcomics]]
* In ''Webcomic/KevinAndKell'', the tree that Lindesfarne and Fenton live in has mentioned that [[https://kevinandkell.com/2017/kk1127.html all plant life can communicate via an interconnected root system]]. Apparently, [[https://kevinandkell.com/2017/kk0105.html it somehow works for potted plants]] as well.
[[/folder]]

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[[quoteright:350:[[VideoGame/PajamaSam https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/british_trees2.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:"Not that intelligent. I played ''TabletopGame/TrivialPursuit'' with them, and they were all [[IncrediblyLamePun stumped]]."]]

%% Caption selected per above IP thread. Please do not replace or remove without discussion in the Caption Repair thread:
%% https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1404492079030138900

* ''Literature/DoubleVision'', by Tricia Sullivan, has the Grid, a seemingly sentient fungal clonal colony on an alien planet. It turns out that [[spoiler:it's the main character's subconscious attempting to interpret TV marketing]].
* ''Literature/FederationOfTheHub'': In "Balanced Ecology", the diamondwood forest on Wrake is a closely integrated ecology with, as it turns out, its own plans for how to cope with the human colonists on its world.

* ''VideoGame/TheTraderOfStories'': The forest is not just intelligent but outright snarky, being made of crotchety old trees and younger trees that care for saplings. The main character (a human) is only tolerated by some of the trees and accepted by others, which is why she eventually leaves.

* ''Literature/{{Semiosis}}'': Stevland the {{Plant Alien|s}} is a colony of bamboo-like plants that spans miles, sharing a single root system.

* In ''[[Literature/JackelianSeries The Kingdom Beyond The Waves]]'', the Daggish is a region of the Liongeli Jungle which operates as a HiveMind, assimilating plants, animals, and unlucky explorers into its consciousness. [[spoiler: It's a result of one of Camlantis's OrganicTechnology waste-processing sentient trees, left behind when the city was launched into the sky, mutating over the intervening millenia and exploiting a mind-control artifact.]]

* In ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'', there's the Swamp, a huge habitat reportedly made from one central tree. The "forest" itself seems to have a mind of its own, too, though whether it's sentient or not is mysterious.

[[caption-width-right:350:"Not that intelligent. I played ''TabletopGame/TrivialPursuit'' with them, and they were all stumped."]]