The Secret Life of Fungi by Aliya Whiteley

Author:Aliya Whiteley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783965311
Publisher: Elliott & Thompson

This is a tale of evolution.

9

Seven Ways to Survive

I dreamed of travelling. In my school textbook there were seven continents, and in my mind there were great wonders on them that I was desperate to see. I made a list of manmade and natural things, without really thinking of the differences between them: the Eiffel Tower, Angel Falls, the Grand Canyon, Abu Simbel. They all existed separately, drawn on an imagined canvas.

I remember learning about the continents in terms of tectonic plates and land mass, but never really connecting them to the creatures that lived on them. They were empty spaces, and biology was a separate subject on a different day. But the more I read and see, the more I find myself trying to piece together the puzzle of the world. How do we all live on it? How do we fit? So, let’s take a brief tour of this world, and see how fungi thrive and survive within it. Let’s fill this blank canvas with the strange, wonderful forms of life that often get overlooked for prettier sights.

You could start in the European forests that remain, under the dense, dark canopy of beech trees that began to dominate the landscape after the Ice Age. Beech grows thick, crowding out other contenders, creating a harsh environment that presents unique challenges, but there is still much beauty and diversity to be found there. If you were to walk through one of the ancient beech forests that have been brought under human protection (a strange concept, but a necessary one – you can find them throughout Continental Europe, from Ukraine to Spain) you will come across Oudemansiella mucida – the Porcelain Fungus, also known as the Poached Egg Fungus. Their glistening white caps are attached to thin stems that curve to maintain a permanently horizontal position, and they jut out from rotting beeches in clusters, translucent and slimy as jellyfish. There’s an elegant, otherworldly quality to the way they climb high on the trunks, looking down on us mere humans from their vantage points.

You won’t find other fungi around them. They have a secret weapon. They produce their own fungicide to keep the beech trees all to themselves. The type of fungicide they make, strobilurins, is so effective that it has since been synthesised for agricultural use, but it originates from wood-rotting fungi such as the Oudemansiella mucida and the Strobilurus tenacellus; we’ve stolen their secret for our own benefit, but left the fungus itself alone in these deep, protected forests – thin flesh and mucal texture mean they are far from good to eat, even if they aren’t poisonous.

After a walk through the woods, you could move on to Asia, and a trek through the Himalayas. These mountains are spread across Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and China, their peaks some of the highest in the world, and they are sacred to many who live in their shadows. But the land is not only cold and bare. So many forms of

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