Eden Wild Goose Nature
Nature notes from the Focus Magazine December 2021

Fantastic fungi

When I was a child, if I thought about mushrooms, it was all quite simple. First there was the fantastical, fuelled by pictures in my beloved fairy tale books.

Then there was the other picture book, proudly wielded by my dad, as he strode forth with all the confidence of a well-armed, yet entirely ignorant amateur, to go mushroom hunting. I, just a wee girl, was in awe of his courage, but I don’t remember ever eating any of his finds. Happy to say, he lived fully and flamboyantly till long after the waning of his mushroom hunting enthusiasm.
 
Little did I know- and truly, little do I know now- just how much fungus underpins our very existence and survival. Isn’t it strange? All those mushrooms, all the fungi growing on and around trees that we see in the woods and amongst the leaf mould, are just the visible signs of a vast third kingdom, between those of animals and plants, entirely separate and yet with features in common to both.
 
The world of fungus is largely, but not solely, underground and unseen by us, and there is still much unknown and much to learn. It seems to me, to refer once again to the fantastical, recent discoveries are, in their own way, just as amazing as any fairy story. Merlin Sheldrake (!), fungus expert and author, writes, “As you read these words, fungi are changing the way life happens, as they have done for more than a billion years. They are eating rock, making soil, digesting pollutants, nourishing and killing plants, surviving in space, inducing visions, producing food, making medicines, manipulating animal behaviour, and influencing the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere”.
 
He goes on to tell how this hidden world, on which we are utterly dependent, is still barely discovered, but also at risk as the environment is degraded by all the forces we are learning so much about.
 
Robert MacFarlane, in ‘Underland’, works hard to capture in words something of the complexity of the fungal web that lies beneath our feet, and even in and all around us. Accompanying Sheldrake on a trip into Epping Forest, near London, he listens to him explaining how, invisibly to us, the fungal network is ‘frothing and tangling and fusing’ as it grows and explores and pushes between the tree roots, soil, leaf matter and other organisms. Macfarlane comments how it feels eerie, as if the forest floor below is alive and moving, shifting and shimmering,
not the solid thing we usually take it for.
 
So, a suggestion- next time you walk in Wetheral Woods, or in any woodland area, kick the soil a little, smell it, feel it and take a moment to be aware that it
is alive with mysterious fungal forces that are, even now, shaping the world we live in and too often take for granted.
Philippa Skinner

Merlin Sheldrake, Guardian October 10th, 2020
Robert Macfarlane, Underland, Penguin 2020