This is the time when fungi, toadstools, mushrooms are popping up all over the place.

Cooler days and nights, moister conditions favour the many species that release their spores into the air, soil, or water.

Those spores create a mycelium … a “mat” of while root-like structures (Hyphae), which indeed act like the root system of plants. These hyphae are just minute! The thickness of one cell-wall!

You can see these hyphae if you start fossicking around in compost heaps or under rotting logs in the forest.

When hyphae combine they form a “fruiting body” – often in the form of a toadstool or mushroom; in fact they can be any fungal form, really…

Those fruiting bodies are of course the organ that produces and releases billions of spores which are released for reproduction. They are also the way mycologists identify which species they are dealing with.

Fungi perform a number of ecosystem “services”;

Decomposition is the most well-known job: crating compostable materials from wood, twigs, leaves, and any organic material that “once lived”.

Fungi “see” the timber from which your house is made as nothing more than a fallen tree in the forest and its job is to get rid of that fallen wood and de-construct its form and molecular framework, so that other composters (further down the line) can take over and slowly but surely break it all down into food for the next generation of plant life… (nutrient cycling)

These fungi are growing in a compost heap – they are the “finishing touch” to making compost for the garden.

Fungi have been on our planet much longer than plants: 1.3 billion years; (Plants about 700 million years); They are not related to plants as many people may think – they are their own separate Kingdom and are actually closer related to animals (humans!!) than plants

Go outside when you can; get into the woods with a smart-phone loaded with iNaturalist and log what’s around on the moist soil and litter and under rotting logs. Fungi are MAGIC and could well hold the key for human survival and technology on the planet!

Just Google “Paul Stamets” and you’ll find the most incredible stories.

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