Mushrooms and dirty diapers

When I walk the woods these days I realize that I am seeing only a fraction what is here.

The trees, the low-growing bushes and the animals all are obvious. I see the white birches, the maples, magnificent oaks and pines, as well as the ferns and blueberry bushes.

Sometimes a deer or a bear slips quickly and quietly in and out of my view. The insects are not nearly as shy and cautious. They are seen, heard, and felt.

It’s easy to think of these abundant species of the plant and animal kingdoms as our entire world. They are only a part of it.

Unseen – actually hidden from us – are many thousands of species that are an important part of the forest. In fact, this forest would not exist without them.

These are the 144,000 of known species of organisms that make up nature’s third kingdom – the kingdom of fungi. Some experts believe there may be as many as two to almost four million species of fungi.

Despite those huge numbers, fungi have not been given the same prominence and amount of study as plants and animals. Only now are we starting to understand the importance of fungi, and their possible help in solving the problems of our future.

My interest in fungi was limited to mushrooms, so prominent this month on the forest floor after the recent rains, or the brown fungus that sometimes forms on a toenail. Other commonly-known fungi are yeast, rust, mildew and mould.

That has changed since a friend gave me a fascinating new book titled Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our World, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures. The author is British biologist-writer Merlin Sheldrake, a magical moniker for a magical subject.

It is a complex book, but fascinating and readable, with page after page packed with information about the importance of fungi. I finished reading it with a sense that study of the fungi kingdom has been neglected in favour of plants and animals research.

Yet it was fungi that helped plants to begin living on land millions of years ago.

Some biologists believe that 90 per cent of living plants have a life-giving relationship with fungal networks entangled in their roots.

It’s a really cool relationship – tentacled fungi networks living deep in the dark soil help the tree to absorb moisture and minerals. In return, the tree collects sunlight, carbon dioxide and moisture from the open air to produce nutrients that it shares with fungi.

But most fascinating is the idea that fungi are not just the dumb and dirty little organisms that cannot communicate the way animals and some plants do. Entangled Life notes that some experts believe that fungal networks monitor large streams of data as part of their everyday existence.

Sheldrake speculates that if we were somehow able to tap into those fungal data streams we could learn more about the ecosystem, including soil quality, water purity and pollution.

We humans believe that a brain or mind is needed to have intelligence and cognition. Fungi do not have brains or minds but maybe they have other ways of gaining intelligence and knowledge and understanding – ways that we cannot see or understand.

Naturalist Charles Darwin, best known for his theory of evolution, wrote 150 years ago:

“Intelligence is based on how efficient a species becomes at doing the things they need to survive.”

Fungi certainly have found some way of staying alive and helping plants and animals – we humans included – to do likewise.

Fungi are important to humans. They help to provide us food such as mushrooms, bread, cheese and, of course, beer. They are important in making life-saving medicines such as penicillin, and chemicals.

Some fungi have powerful appetites for pollutants. Entangled Lives notes they can consume cigarette butts, some herbicides, crude oil, some plastics and even baby diapers.

One research project showed that a certain fungus consumed 85 per cent of a mass of soiled diapers over two years. During the process, the fungus produced edible oyster mushrooms that had no trace of human disease.

Anything that can turn dirty diapers into delicious oyster mushrooms surely offers some good possibilities for cleaning up our increasingly polluted world.

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