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story identification - Ecological tale of a world covered by a forest that is all one organism


Interstellar explorers have discovered what looks like a very suitable planet for human colonization. The climate is good, there are no pathogens, and a beautiful forest grows abundantly. A charming aspect of the flora is that leaves can detach themselves and fly off like flocks of multicolored butterflies. When they land on humans, the fliers take a tiny genetic sample as a sort of hello. Some of the biologists at the research station are disturbed that this idyllic scene will soon be plowed under.



To make the planet ready for settlers, an island has been cleared of native vegetation and inroads are being made on the mainland as well. But the forest that covers the mainland resists mightily, creating solid rings of wood around cleared areas that are planted with terrestrial vegetation. And it's hard to keep an area cleared when the trees can distributed themselves as flying leaves. The woody rings can be blasted open to allow terrestrial plants a foothold, but more rings form, and from the air the scars are very evident.


The forest is really all one organism. Eventually a pair of characters finds it possible to communicate chemically with this world-straddling forest. In the process, they become symbiotic with it.


I probably read (and reread) this story in an English-language anthology during the 70s, a time when ecologic concepts were becoming widespread in science fiction.



Answer



Hunter, Come Home by Richard McKenna. From the anthology Casey Agonistes.


The leaves that fly are the Phytos. Annoyingly I have mislaid my copy of the book so I can't give my usual quotes. However the story is about the attempt to kill the indigenous life using some form of bioweapon called Thanasis. The rings are structures formed by Thanasis as it battles the indigenous life.


This is a fantastic anthology and is the only SF that Richard McKenna wrote. Copies are hard to find these days, but if you can find one I thoroughly recommend it. Richard McKenna is better known for his historical novel The Sand Pebbles, but his sole SF book is excellent if sadly underappreciated.


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