Don Thank you for taking the time to define your terms. See that's the problem (not the fact that you defined your terms - that's great). People speak of material or a mass of material such as a piece of wood and its contents as being dead, non-ecologically functioning, waste, no value, etc. When in reality it is symplastless and house a great deal of living organisms and organs such as mycorrhizae. I understand that a plane is dead yet often there are many people inside the plane. To call a plane flying over above as dead is at least a half truth. Same as referring to a chunk of wood in a forest as dead. A symplastless piece of wood often specifically recognized as "dead wood" can be made up of at least 35% fungi cells alone. You stated that when you say dead wood you mean symplastless. That's fine, at least I know now what you mean. However too often the term dead wood is used and misunderstood. I do respect the fact that you defined your terms. Please understand when I say symplastless wood I do not mean dead wood, non-ecologically functioning, waste, no value, etc.
In contrast, a symplastless tree or log includes a considerable number of living cells, as much 35% of the biomass may be live fungal cells (Franklin, Shugart and Harmon, 1987, pg 551).
We document that a large symplastless tree is not a wasted resource; indeed, it continues to function as an important part of a terrestrial or water system, either while remaining on the site at which it once grew, or by becoming a structural part of an aquatic or marine habitat. We aim to help anyone interested in perpetual forest productivity to understand the importance of large, symplastless woody debris. The book develops certain principles and ideas in sequence from the forest to the sea (Maser, Tarrant, Trappe and Franklin, 1988, pg 1par5).
John