Mushroom magic

I'm reading a brilliant new book called Entangled Life  by Merlin Sheldrake.  It's about the relationship between plants and fungi through mycorrhiza, the invisible subterranean filaments that connect with the roots of plants to create an intricate, intimate,  network of communications. This has long been known to exist but its purpose and function has not been fully appreciated.  Now it has become clear that involves a two-way swap of nutrients  that benefits both: plants supply carbon (made by photosynthesis, which is to say the sunlight on their leaves) and microscopic fungi supply phosphorus and  nitrogen (extracted from the earth and compost). Each needs what the other can provide and so there's a kind of exchange economy at work. What's more the underground connections (mycelia) spread far and wide, between trees of the same and different species. Hence what has become known as The Wood Wide Web.

Merlin Sheldrake is an erudite  young biologist who has done original research  into the subject but who also has intellectual depth and breadth to create his own network of connections with history, science and the arts  as he explains how  fungi  interweave and underpin the whole of  life on earth.
 Without fungi, plants could not have evolved and without plants...

About Merlin
Interview here (one of many)
Book review here (one of many)



(My photo is of Liberty Caps, the so-called magic mushrooms, that appear on the upland turf at this time of year.)