Yes! It is crazy, trees don't have nervous systems or brains, but they do send electrical impulses through their being (albeit very slowly! IIRC it takes like 5 minutes for an electrical impulse from one part of the tree to reach down to the roots?)
It is truly incredible. Researchers have seen trees nuturing one another--even when they aren't related! Like if one tree gets injured, they have seen other nearby trees share nutrients to help keep it alive/nurse it back to health. Older trees will even change their root structure to make room for saplings.
If you are into reading or have audible and this topic is of interest, then check out the book:
The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate by Peter Wohlleben, which was published in 2016.
There was also a documentary made based off the book.
You can rent it on Amazon Prime Video for $5 in HD. It definitely skips over a fair amount of info that's in the book just because there isn't enough time, but it does a great job of summarizing the majority of the info and expanding upon it with more recent research that has validated and furthered the information in the book. This is one of those things that should be mandatory reading in school nowadays, as it truly changes the world and should change the way we interact with the world.
Now, does this mean the forest is conscious? As humans, we tend to anthropomorphize things like this, but the fact is that we don't really know. Individual trees certainly don't seem to be conscious. The forest doesn't seem to experience emotions--although it certainly can evoke strong emotions within us (calming us down, de-stressing, even just sitting and
looking at trees lowers salivary cortisol levels). Some have suggested, although there's not enough evidence, that perhaps the root systems of trees are akin to a nervous system of sorts.
It's an evolving field of study, but we do know that trees experience a defense response when a bug starts eating their leaves, or when a human starts cutting branches or harvesting them. They will release chemicals into their leaves and such that make them taste more bitter/bad or may even be toxic to the bug. They will then send this message to other nearby trees so that they can defend themselves too, should other bugs arrive or that bug move to a different nearby tree. It is quite incredible.
Most of this is due to symbiotic relationships between certain trees and specific types of fungi. They form networks that allow them to communicate, exchange nutrients, etc. It's funny, a popular phrase among foresters and loggers is that "A forest doesn't manage itself". Implying that human intervention is needed for a healthy forest. This is total bullshit. Forests have managed themselves for millennia--and would continue to do so should we disappear. We tend to disrupt forests and ecosystems far more than we help. It is a lifelong pursuit to learn how to live in harmony with the environment and sustain a healthy forest or prairie or whatever ecosystem we live in. Most people don't even know what a healthy forest or prairie looks like. They see a forest full of Japanese honeysuckle and think it's just beautiful, when in reality it is killing the ecosystem and disrupting the entire habitat. Things will go on, yes, as they do, but not necessarily for the better. This is why I think it's so important to educate kids on this sort of thing. Our education system is still stuck in the 90s or early 2000s. This isn't even cutting edge knowledge--it's been around for 6 years! But no, the kids have to read To Kill a Mockingbird or Romeo and Juliet because
that is going to make a positive impact on the world LMFAO