Writings

Author Shelley Dayton

Mystery. Adventure. Monkeys.

Writings

What makes fungi so darn interesting?

I watched Modern Marvels: Mold And Fungus today, in an attempt to answer that question.

I think it’s the contrasts.

A single unit of mold is invisible to the naked eye. But the world’s largest organism is a fungus. It owns some land in Oregon…2,200 acres, to be specific. The tops of several contiguous hills are covered with it, and few trees can grow there. It weight 35 tons.

Fungi destroy crops. But other fungi are used to destroy those fungi. And yet others are used to kill the insects which eat crops, which feed the fungi, which live in the house that Jack built.

And while fungi destroy our food, we eat them. The program taught about tempeh (fermented soybean blocks), fungus used as a meat replacement, and mushrooms. All of which make me wish I’d eaten a smaller lunch.

Then again, there are bread and cheese, two fungi-ridden foods that make my day and have been a staple of human civilization since we figured out how to milk goats.

And then there’s the startling contrast between how mushrooms are cultivated, and how we grow vegetables. Of course, fungi are grown in dark, temperature and humidity-controlled places. A mushroom producer in Pennsylvania grows them in underground limestone caves and harvests them with the use of headlamps. It’s mysterious and interesting stuff.

Experienced wild mushroom hunters grub around the forest floor, pick bags of these things from logs, the sides of trees, or just from the leaf litter, and then sell them for lots of money to high end restaurants where they are turned into cuisine. How’s that for contrast?

And here’s the obligatory warning: a lot of the extremely toxic, wipe-out-a-village mushrooms look just like regular old stew mushrooms to me…leave the picking to the experts, please.

Which leads me to another contrast: they feed us. They also kill us. Fungi have been used for murder weapons throughout recorded history. And, of course, they eat us…Athlete’s foot, ringworm, and oh so much worse…

What a strange relationship we have with them! To humans, they are food, medicine, pest, and murderer. These creatures are definitely worth a second look…and maybe an hour’s worth of education.