The Secret Life of Fungi
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Fungi are unlike any other living thing—they almost magically unique. Welcome to this astonishing world. . .
Fungi can appear anywhere, from desert dunes to frozen tundra. They can invade our bodies and live between our toes or our floorboards. They are unwelcome intruders or vastly expensive treats, and symbols of both death and eternal life. But despite their familiar presence, there's still much to learn about the eruption, growth, and decay of their secret, interconnected, world.
Aliya Whiteley has always been in love with fungi—from her childhood taking blurry photographs of strange fungal eruptions on Exmoor to a career as a writer inspired by their surreal and alien beauty. This love for fungi is a love for life, from single-cell spores to the largest living organism on the planet; a story stretching from Aliya's lawn into orbit and back again via every continent.
From fields, feasts and fairy rings to death caps, puffballs and ambrosia beetles, this is an intoxicating journey into the life of extraordinary organism, one that we have barely begun to understand.
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Novelist Whiteley (Skyward Inn) ruminates whimsically on her experiences foraging, cooking, and researching mushrooms. "Biology is not my best subject," she writes, and though she explains a few mycological mysteries (for example, how the enzymes of the Aspergillus tubingensis can break down plastic), her talents come to bear when describing the shape ("a whitish woolly cylinder"), smell ("an active aroma of climbing damp and shifting soil"), and taste ("mildly nutty... a hint of earthly flavor") of various fungi. She marvels at the symbiotic relationships mushrooms form with other organisms, and how some reproduce—Pilobolus crystallinus, she notes, disperses its spores at a speed of 32 kilometers per hour. Among other bits of trivia readers are treated to is the fact that there are 108 species of lichen on the stones of Stonehenge, and that NASA is considering using mycelium—the threadlike filaments from which mushrooms form—as building material for radiation-resistant living shelters on Mars. (There's also a recipe for mushroom stew with cheese dumplings.) Though too lighthearted for serious mycologists, casual nature lovers will enjoy this compendium of trivia and musings. Budding fungi enthusiasts, take note.
