Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures

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The tips circulate “information”, and, in response, the mycelium makes advantageous changes to its behaviour. This is more than mere chemical reaction. Here is a responsive entity with interests that its actions can serve or harm. Sheldrake tries out the idea of swarm-intelligence, but a swarm consists of separate individuals, whereas the network of fused or entangled hyphae functions as a physical whole – or much more like a physical whole. Studying fungi makes these lines harder to draw. From mould to yeast, fungi are a diverse kingdom with over 15,000 species in the UK. Fungi are made up of different microscopic thread like bodies called hyphae, and collectively hyphae form mycelium. Mushrooms or toadstools are the reproductive, umbrella shaped fruiting bodies of certain fungi. These organisms can be found in almost every natural habitat, but more kinds of macro-fungi tend to be found in woodlands, as they provide a rich and continuing nutrient source and a wide range of microhabitats. A lavish work. . . . [A] book with a message about both the beauty and importance of fungi that should be widely available in bookshops worldwide and so help raise the global awareness of kingdom Fungi. I cannot commend it too strongly, and if you have not yet seen it you are in for a real treat—perhaps a mycologist's equivalent of being a kid in a candy store."— IMA Fungus Identification: A grey to fawn cap that is at first egg-shaped and then later bell shaped. The surface is smooth and splits into a few tiny scales from the apex, the edges are often wavy and split. Stem is white and hollow. Cap is around 4-8 cm across and stem is 5-15 cm tall.

Grief grinds slowly; it devours all the time it needs.” Thus begins Long Litt Woon’s memoir of mourning and mushroom foraging. After 32 years of marriage, Long’s husband suddenly passed away. Lost in a world of grief, she enrolled in a foraging course—a decision that changed the direction of her life. The Way Through the Woodscaptures Long’s journey with loss, as well as how mushrooming helped her reconnect with the world. At the heart of her memoir is the conviction that engaging with mushrooms and the natural world can be a radically transformative experience. Long’s book is a moving read with a different perspective on the fungal world. Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World: An Identification Guide by Paul St amets The superficial morphologic similarities between actinomycetes (filamentous bacteria) and molds suggest that the two groups have undergone parallel evolution. Despite the production of branching filaments and mold-like spores, the actinomycetes are clearly prokaryotes, whereas fungi are eukaryotes. Moreover, the sexual reproduction of bacteria, which typically occurs by transverse binary fission, should not be confused with asexual processes of budding and fragmentation associated with mitotic nuclear division in fungi. Most of the molds that produce septate vegetative hyphae reproduce exclusively by asexual means, giving rise to airborne propagules called conidia. On the other hand, elaborate mechanisms of sexual reproduction are also demonstrated by members of the Eumycota. Four distinct kinds of meiospores (products of karyogamy-meiosis-cytokinesis) are recognized: oospores (Oomycetes), zygospores (Zygomycetes), ascospores (Ascomycetes), and basidiospores (Basidiomycetes). Cryptococcus neoformans produces a capsular polysaccharide composed of at least three distinct polymers: glucuronoxylomannan, galactoxylomannan, and mannoprotein. On the basis of the proportion of xylose and glucuronic acid residues, the degree to which mannose has side-chain substituents, and the percentage of O-acetyl attachments of the capsular polysaccharides, isolates of C neoformans can be separated into four antigenic groups designated A, B, C, and D. The capsule is antiphagocytic, serves as a virulence factor, persists in body fluids, and allows the yeast to avoid detection by the host immune system. Petersen has been both a mycologist and a fine arts photographer for decades. His ability to capture minute fungal structures while maintaining a stunning aesthetic in the 800-plus photos makes this book an unsurpassed treasure. . . . [I]t would be a showpiece in any specialist's collection. The volume's spectacular images will captivate even the most disinterested individual."— Choice This book provides an intimate look at a vast variety of fungal species and fungal life as never done before. . . . The overall appearance of the book is well laid and highly recommended as a coffee table book for students, scholars and fungal lovers."—Melvina D'souza & Kevin D. Hyde, Fungal DiversityCollins Fungi Guide: The Most Complete Field Guide to the Mushrooms & Toadstools of Britain & Ireland

The Kingdom of Fungi is a feast for the senses, and the ideal reference for naturalists, researchers, and anyone interested in fungi."— Northeastern Naturalist Appropriately, Sheldrake is tentative in these descriptions, and offers a range of terms and metaphors, for none seems exactly right. Each articulation seems either too anthropomorphic or too reductive. Some expressions attribute too much intelligence, choice or even feeling to the mycelium; some too little. Sheldrake is feeling his way towards new vocabularies and concepts. A great deal of ecological thought now asks us to take more note of the relationships of interdependency that embed and sustain us, including many too large or small for unaided vision. The interpenetration of these systems raises questions about the boundaries of our selfhood. It is difficult now to think simply in terms of inside and outside, or self and not-self. Sheldrake uses the term “involution”, coined recently to shift emphasis from the evolution of separate life-forms to the emergence of these systems. Eugenia Bone’s Mycophilia is a love letter to the fungal world and the mushroom foraging community. Having served as president of the New York Mycological Society, Bone knows this community intimately. Therefore, her book details the gamut of foragers: from amateur enthusiasts out on the trails to the hardcore finders who are part of the commercial industry. Along the way, she provides a social history of mushroom use in cooking and medicine. However, the best parts of Mycophilia are seeing Bone in action. She documents her travels with foragers, conversations with restaurateurs and those in the industry, and, most importantly, her unabashed love of mushrooms. The Way Through the Woods: On Mushrooms and Mourning by Long Litt Woon The Kingdom of Fungi is a feast for the senses, and the ideal reference for naturalists, researchers, and anyone interested in fungi. I find this a horror, and want to assert our human need to do so, even if the ant experiences nothing that we should call suffering, and it is only as drama that the spectacle is appalling. The fact that Ophiocordyceps has evolved to do this and has no choice makes little difference. A creature’s perceptions and desires have turned into enemies steering it to its death. There is no symbiosis or negotiation. Even a farm animal, a free-range one anyway, has some agency while it lives, but this ant has none. It becomes purely a means to an end desired by another. Human beings sometimes do this, and other abominable things that they often succeed in regarding as right, or normal, or not worth noticing, yet humans alone, as far as we know, have a highly developed ability to see their own natural behaviour as wrong. Reading about the fate of these ants made me grab at the idea of a conscience, however imperfect, that makes us different from fungi, or from a male tiger killing a female’s cubs to bring her into season.In this lavishly illustrated volume, six hundred fungi from around the globe get their full due. Each species here is reproduced at its actual size, in full color, and is accompanied by a scientific explanation of its distribution, habitat, association, abundance, growth form, spore color, and edibility. Location maps give at-a-glance indications of each species’ known global distribution, and specially commissioned engravings show different fruitbody forms and provide the vital statistics of height and diameter. With information on the characteristics, distinguishing features, and occasionally bizarre habits of these fungi, readers will find in this book the common and the conspicuous, the unfamiliar and the odd. There is a fungal predator, for instance, that hunts its prey with lassos, and several that set traps, including one that entices sows by releasing the pheromones of a wild boar.