Mushrooms are Having a Moment
So I took a journey into the fringes of fungal fascination — here’s what I learned
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What comes to mind when you hear or see the word ‘mushrooms’? Maybe it’s the red–and–white–speckled Amanita muscaria of Super Mario fame (seemingly the kingdom’s designated ambassador). Or maybe it’s the mental image of people with long hair, wearing tie-dye, open–toed sandals and a goofy grin. Perhaps it’s just the ubiquitous, anonymous white caps that dot the suburban lawnscape, unremarkable except when telling your kids not to eat them.
Mushrooms—and the fungi that produce them—carry all sorts of cultural associations around the world. What’s more, they are ubiquitous to nature throughout the planet. Fungi grow within their food and hosts, and can be found in or in partnership with plants, animals, microbes and soil in every biome and ecosystem, in roles that are symbiotic as they are parasitic or pathogenic (that is, deadly to their host). They play many roles even within our own bodies, in ‘mycobiomes’ that science is just beginning to understand. That lack of understanding has created a certain arms-length relationship between us and them, but in recent years there has been a boom of interest in their many roles in nature, potential uses for humans, and their sheer aesthetic and ecological weirdness.
Indeed, mushrooms are generating real enthusiasm even in “mycophobic” countries like the United States. Here, diverse communities have been forming around fungi in an effort to raise their recognition and status, to explore their many uses and crucial ecological roles, and even as inspiration to consider new ways of relating to nature and to one another. In 2015, I got caught up in this burgeoning fungal fascination, and since then have been traveling among a wide variety of mycological circles to learn about fungi and the fellowship that is being cultivated with them, a journey I documented in my new book, In Search of Mycotopia.
The last fifteen years or so have seen the dawning of widespread public awareness of fungi. More people are seemingly starting to recognize mushrooms—and the…
