Best Nature Book: Nature’s Treasures: Tales of More Than 100 Extraordinary Objects from Nature by Ben Hoare Identification: One of the largest fungi in the UK, it is similar in size to a football. The young fruiting bodies are solid, white, thin and smooth and then later turn olive, then finally brown when it opens. When mature it is roughly 20-75 cm across. There is no stem, however it can be connected to the ground by a fine root like filament.

Yet as amazing as mushrooms are, they are just the above-ground extensions of the fungi below. The fungal world is a wild and fascinating place, and has shaped our environment in ways that we are only beginning to understand. The eight books below explore the Fungi Kingdom, sketch out its relationship to the human world, and reveal its paramount significance to life on this zany planet. Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World by Paul Stamets Identification: Has a blue to violet tinged cap and gills when young, however older caps turn tan or grey from the centre. Gills are crowded and grow into the stalk and fade to brown as the mushroom matures. The cap is roughly 5-15 cm across, and the stem 5-10 cm tall. So, mycorrhizal fungi are destroyed not only by digging and ploughing, but also by the use of artificial feeding, and of course by pesticides, herbicides and fungicides. This is bad news not only for plants, but also for the planet. Much more carbon is stored in soil than in land vegetation and the atmosphere combined (according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation Soils Portal, more than twice as much). About a third of this is held in the bodies of fungi, both living and dead, where it survives for much longer than, for example, in dead plant matter. The FAO estimates that 10 per cent of anthropogenic carbon emissions could be sequestered in soils worldwide over 25 years. But making good on that possibility will require major changes in farming techniques.Do psilocybin fungi wear our minds, as Ophiocordyceps and Massospora wear insect bodies? ’ Sheldrake asks. It’s a marvellous, disorientating notion. But his answer is a qualified ‘no’: science has not found any evidence of a long-term evolutionary advantage for fungi in using psilocybin to form a symbiotic relationship with humans or their minds. Our eating them doesn’t appear to help them in evolutionary terms; the timescales of human intervention are too short, and psilocybin-producing fungi have been around too long to care much about people. More likely, the compound developed to interfere with other beings, probably fungivorous insects.

Unfortunately, some customers have reported that the illustrations are not the best quality, especially when compared to some other books. Pros and Cons of Fungarium: Welcome to the Museum by Ester Gaya Pros The questions grow more complicated. Mycorrhizal fungi are species whose mycelia penetrate and entangle themselves with plant roots. A symbiotic exchange occurs, in which the photosynthesising plant feeds the mycelium with carbon, and receives from it nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrients. I nearly wrote “receives in return”. Descriptions of this relationship can barely reject the language of bargains. There is frequent adjustment. Plants funnel chemical information from the air to the fungus, whose mycelia bring similar signals to the plant from underground. In woodland, the network, involving numerous species, can be so extensive and dense that trees detect what happens to each other across long distances. Some people call this the “Wood Wide Web”.Hi! I'm Max and I'm a writer from Minneapolis, Minnesota. I've been freelancing for more than five years and love the freedom and variety that this profession offers. Animals are also a big part of my life, and a lot of my time is dedicated to playing with my cat, Herbie. The Best Children’s Books About Fungi: Reviewed and Ranked FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) They make our lives possible, and they make our lives better.... as long as we know which ones to avoid. Umm, could Psilocybin mushroom consumption be the needed first step in effectively mitigating human caused global warming and extinctions? [My thoughts, not the author's.] About biocomputing, a conversation between Andrew Adamatzky, Professor in Unconventional Computing in the Department of Computer Science and Director of the Unconventional Computing Laboratory, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK, and Merlin Sheldrake, the author: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-LIV... Okay, before I even get into this review, how perfect is this guy's name? Not only does he study mushrooms, he has a name like a professor in one of the Harry Potter books. Which is perfect, since mushrooms do have a bit of a reputation for being mysterious, sinister, and even kind of spooky. Which, if you read this book, you'll find out is a reputation that they totally deserve.

Paraphrasing the author, the relationship between plants and fungi gave rise to the biosphere as we know it and supports life on land to this day, but there is still much more we have to learn. You might remember that in The Extended Phenotype, Richard Dawkins points out that genes don’t just provide the instructions to build the body of an organism. They also provide instructions to build certain behaviors. But, those behaviors can be manipulated. a b c Bone, Eugenia (22 May 2020). " 'Entangled Life' Review: Digging Into Enigmatic Organisms". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 17 July 2020 . Retrieved 31 August 2020. You will learn here how to grow oyster mushrooms out of baby poop (removing the plastic from the diapers first, of course), how mushrooms can 'consume' Saddam Hussein's VX gas, degrade pesticides and remove infectious diseases like E. coli.I learned so much from this book and had a lovely time reading the elegant prose and lush descriptions, following along as the author asked more questions than he answered on a quest for knowledge and enlightenment. Entangled Life is a well-chosen title. These two words perfectly describe this book. While it is about fungi, Sheldrake delivers a much broader message. One about relationships and the perspectives we adopt to see those relationships. These are not relationships between people but relationships between different forms of life: Fungi, microbes, plants and animals including humans. We see how the world we know depends on these relationships, and the critical role fungi play in these relationships.

Okay, so I couldn’t write this list and not include one on psilocybin mushrooms! The author of Mycelium Running, Paul Stamets provides an authoritative guide to psychoactive fungi, complete with visual and biological information on over 100 species. Throughout the guide, he carefully explains how to forage responsibly for these special mushrooms and poisonous look-a-likes to avoid. Additionally, he discusses how ancient cultures around the world used these mushrooms, as well as modern-day practices. If you’re looking for a great trip, Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World is your book! they describe fossilized mycelium preserved in the fractures of ancient lava flows. The fossils show branching filaments that "touch and entangle each other." The "tangled network" they form, the dimensions of the hyphae, the dimensions of spore-like structures, and the pattern of its growth all closely resemble modern-day fungal mycelium. It is an extraordinary discovery because the fossils date from 2.4 billion years ago, more than a billion years before fungi were thought to have branched off the tree of life. Identification: Are cup-shaped and scarlet, however can also be bright orange. Stems attach to the leaf litter making them appear as hollow bowls lying on the woodland floors. Cups are roughly 4cm across. Chernobyl fungus could shield astronauts from cosmic radiation: https://bigthink.com/surprising-scien... Our descriptions warp and deform the phenomena we describe, but sometimes this is the only way to talk about features of the world: to say what they are like but what they are not."That's Monotropa uniflora, a plant species that long ago lost the ability to photosynthesize. Instead, Monotropa receives the carbon and nutrients that it needs from other plants, but through a fungal network. Researchers in the field call this the Wood Wide Web. Thank you for signing up! Keep an eye on your inbox. By signing up you agree to our terms of use Mushrooms Demystified by David Arora Unfortunately, some customers reported that this book is a little too lengthy for children to enjoy. Pros and Cons of The Mushroom Fan Club by Elise Gravel Pros