Popular accounts describe forests as cooperative superorganisms linked by a 'wood-wide web,' a network of mycorrhizal fungi through which mature trees supposedly channel sugars to struggling seedlings. The claim rests largely on greenhouse experiments in which carbon isotopes moved from one seedling to another through shared fungal threads. A recent review, however, cautions that field evidence for such directed sharing remains thin. The reviewers note that isotopes can travel through soil by several routes, that transfers measured in the field are small and often flow toward the fungus rather than any recipient tree, and that no study has shown a seedling growing better because of carbon received from a neighbor. They do not deny that mycorrhizal networks exist; rather, they argue that the leap from 'fungi connect roots' to 'trees nurture their kin' has outrun the data.