Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures

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Eugenia Bone’s Mycophilia is a love letter to the fungal world and the mushroom foraging community. Having served as president of the New York Mycological Society, Bone knows this community intimately. Therefore, her book details the gamut of foragers: from amateur enthusiasts out on the trails to the hardcore finders who are part of the commercial industry. Along the way, she provides a social history of mushroom use in cooking and medicine. However, the best parts of Mycophilia are seeing Bone in action. She documents her travels with foragers, conversations with restaurateurs and those in the industry, and, most importantly, her unabashed love of mushrooms. The Way Through the Woods: On Mushrooms and Mourning by Long Litt Woon In non-fiction [of 2020], I found the oddest and most uplifting book to be Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake. It is, to say the least, rare to find such a vast area of life on Earth – fungi – about which one knows almost nothing, and which gives promise of being so important to human life during our next century.” Merlin Sheldrake, a mycologist who studies underground fungal networks, carries us easily into these questions with ebullience and precision. His fascination with fungi began in childhood. He loves their colours, strange shapes, intense odours and astonishing abilities, and is proud of the way this once unfashionable academic field is challenging some of our deepest assumptions. Entangled Life is a book about how life-forms interpenetrate and change each other continuously. He moves smoothly between stories, scientific descriptions and philosophical issues. He quotes Prince and Tom Waits. I was completely unprepared for Sheldrake's book. It rolled over me like a tsunami, leaving the landscape rearranged but all the more beautiful.” Appropriately, Sheldrake is tentative in these descriptions, and offers a range of terms and metaphors, for none seems exactly right. Each articulation seems either too anthropomorphic or too reductive. Some expressions attribute too much intelligence, choice or even feeling to the mycelium; some too little. Sheldrake is feeling his way towards new vocabularies and concepts. A great deal of ecological thought now asks us to take more note of the relationships of interdependency that embed and sustain us, including many too large or small for unaided vision. The interpenetration of these systems raises questions about the boundaries of our selfhood. It is difficult now to think simply in terms of inside and outside, or self and not-self. Sheldrake uses the term “involution”, coined recently to shift emphasis from the evolution of separate life-forms to the emergence of these systems.

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds

a b c Cooke, Rachel (23 August 2020). "The future is fungal: why the 'megascience' of mycology is on the rise". The Observer. Archived from the original on 31 August 2020 . Retrieved 31 August 2020. When we think of fungi, we probably think of mushrooms. But mushrooms are only fruiting bodies, analogous to apples on a tree. Most fungi live out of sight, yet make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that support and sustain nearly all living systems. The more we learn about fungi, the less makes sense without them. Sheldrake brilliantly weaves a narrative to reframe our understanding of the fabric of life, extending the boundaries of our identity in the process. Entangled Life positively bristles with insight, dry humour and a passionately curious intelligence. This is a landmark achievement with profound implications for how we collectively contribute to shaping a sustainable future for the whole of life on the planet.” One of those rare books that can truly change the way you see the world around you, Entangled Life is a mercurial, revelatory, impassioned, urgent, astounding, and necessary read. It’s fearless in scope, analytically astute, and brimming with infectious joy." Yet as amazing as mushrooms are, they are just the above-ground extensions of the fungi below. The fungal world is a wild and fascinating place, and has shaped our environment in ways that we are only beginning to understand. The eight books below explore the Fungi Kingdom, sketch out its relationship to the human world, and reveal its paramount significance to life on this zany planet. Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World by Paul Stamets

Medical Microbiology. 4th edition.

The superficial morphologic similarities between actinomycetes (filamentous bacteria) and molds suggest that the two groups have undergone parallel evolution. Despite the production of branching filaments and mold-like spores, the actinomycetes are clearly prokaryotes, whereas fungi are eukaryotes. Moreover, the sexual reproduction of bacteria, which typically occurs by transverse binary fission, should not be confused with asexual processes of budding and fragmentation associated with mitotic nuclear division in fungi. Most of the molds that produce septate vegetative hyphae reproduce exclusively by asexual means, giving rise to airborne propagules called conidia. On the other hand, elaborate mechanisms of sexual reproduction are also demonstrated by members of the Eumycota. Four distinct kinds of meiospores (products of karyogamy-meiosis-cytokinesis) are recognized: oospores (Oomycetes), zygospores (Zygomycetes), ascospores (Ascomycetes), and basidiospores (Basidiomycetes). The most common 'types' (biological families, in most instances) of fungi can be selected via thumbnail images on our Picture Gallery Identification Guide index...

NHBS Guide to Fungi Identification The NHBS Guide to Fungi Identification

To look up details of a fungus species for which you know either the scientific name or the common name just go straight to our Sortable Index Table and select either ' Sort by Scientific Names' or ' Sort by Common Names'. But if you have a mushroom that you don't recognise, then detective work will be necessary - and it can be great fun, too... a b Kerridge, Richard (27 August 2020). "Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake review - from funghi to questions of identity". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on 31 August 2020 . Retrieved 2 September 2020. A 'fairy ring' consists of fungus fruiting bodies emerging around the edge of a mycelial disc that expands from its point of origin. The diameter of the fairy ring gives a rough guide to the age of the fungal organism (the underground mycelium, that is - not the mushrooms, which are merely its fruitbodies). Identification: One of the most iconic toadstools depicted in fairy-tale illustrations. It has a shiny, scarlet red or orange cap with white wart-like spots dotted across. Cap is 8-20 cm across. The gills are white and free, and the stem is swollen with rings of scales.Entangled Life is a gorgeous book of literary nature writing… ripe with insight and erudition… food for the soul.” Borrelli-Persson, Laird (25 January 2021). "Iris van Herpen: Spring 2021 Couture". Vogue . Retrieved 4 February 2021. A) Life cycle of S cerevisiae. (B) Basidiospore formation by Filobasidiella neoformans, sexual state of Cryptococcus neoformans. (1 and 2) Dikaryon formation. (3) Nuclear fusion (Karyogamy). (4 and 5) Meiosis. (6) Basidiospore formation. (7) Mitosis (more...)

8 Astounding Books About Mushrooms and The Fungal World: 8 Astounding Books About Mushrooms and

We now know that over 95% of plants live in symbiosis with fungi, via what are called mycorrhizal interactions. (The fungi link to and act as extensions of - in some instances actually invading the cells of - the fine rootlets of trees, orchids and most other plants.) The role of fungi as natural recyclers of dead plant and animal material is crucial to the survival of all other forms of life on Planet Earth. Apart from a few bacteria, fungi are the only thing that consumes the tough lignin material contained in dead wood. The Amanita fungi, which we categorise as the family Amanitaceae, are by some authorities included in the family Plutaceae, along with Pluteus and Volvariella species. Amanita caesarea (above) occurs in southern Europe and is a prized edible mushroom. Deadly poisonous amanitas include the Deathcap, Amanita phalloides; and Destroying Angel, Amanita virosa. Most famous is Amanita muscaria, the Fly Agaric - a hallucinogenic mushroom that must therefore be treated as poisonous. On the subject of toxins and hallucinogens, Psilocybe semilaceata, the Magic Mushroom, contains Psilobin and Psilocybin, which are hallucinogenic substances; so do many other gilled fungi. Grisettes are also Amanita species, the most common being Amanita fulva, Amanita crocea and Amanita vaginata. Other mushrooms in the group include False Deathcap, Amanita excelsa (synonym Amanita spissa), and Blusher, Amanita rubescens. The lives of fungi alone are fascinating, but the questions and wider implications that Sheldrake teases out from them are often truly astounding… an engrossing, captivating journey… rigorous, comprehensive, perspective-altering… if this book is any indication, [Sheldrake] has an exciting career in not only science but also literature ahead of him.”The tips circulate “information”, and, in response, the mycelium makes advantageous changes to its behaviour. This is more than mere chemical reaction. Here is a responsive entity with interests that its actions can serve or harm. Sheldrake tries out the idea of swarm-intelligence, but a swarm consists of separate individuals, whereas the network of fused or entangled hyphae functions as a physical whole – or much more like a physical whole. Studying fungi makes these lines harder to draw. The biological kingdom of fungi is enormous, containing at least a million species and perhaps ten times that number. Fewer than 100,000 species (17,000 in Britain) have so far been described scientifically and given binomial (Genus + species) names. Geoffrey Kibby is one of Britain’s foremost experts on identifying mushrooms in the field and has published a range of excellent guides/handbooks to mushroom identification.

Grassland Fungi A Field Guide - NHBS Grassland Fungi A Field Guide - NHBS

Discover the kingdom of fungi with Keith Seifert’s book, for indeed, fungi are a different kingdom to plants and animals. It’s a broad book, which is suitable since fungi are so diverse and wide-ranging. It covers everything from how fungi break down wood, how fungi can zombify insects, to how humans have taken on our favourite fungi and used them to make bread, cheese, and alcohol. Reading this book, I felt surrounded by a web of wonder. The natural world is more fantastic than any fantasy, so long as you have the means to perceive it. This book provides the means." Nearly 2400 species are illustrated in full colour, with detailed notes on how to correctly identify them, including details of similar, confusing species. We derive many other benefits from fungi. Since the discovery of Penicillin (which was developed from a Penicillium fungus species) most other antibiotics come from fungi, at least originally. Now that superbugs such as MRSA (methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus) are becoming immune to our current range of antibiotics new medicines are required, and almost certainly they too will be derived from fungi.

More about Fungi on First-Nature.com

This book is as hard to put down as a thrilling detective novel, and one of the best works of popular science writing that I have enjoyed in years. Sheldrake has a gift of explaining very complex concepts and serving it all up in such an engaging way that the reader forgets that they are not supposed to understand this stuff.” Hsu, Hua (18 May 2020). "The Secret Lives of Fungi". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 8 September 2020 . Retrieved 31 August 2020.