I once had a disagreement with a boyfriend about the details of this process. The dispute was more semantic than factual. He described organisms like Pando this way: aspen trees "share their roots" they reach out underground and clasp onto one another as if holding hands. They survive collaboratively. I insisted that the trees weren't holding hands. They were the same tree at root, shooting up many varied expressions of itself, a triumphant single organism. He saw a collective and I saw an individual - which, he observed pointedly, seemed like a pretty decent metaphor for some more critical differences in our dispositions. I rolled my eyes.