The more we learn about fungi, the less makes sense without them. Most fungi live out of sight, yet make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that support and sustain nearly all living systems. But mushrooms are only fruiting bodies, analogous to apples on a tree.

Sheldrake urges us to see life from the fungal perspective and reveals a world that’s both more extraordinary and more delicate than could be imagined.When we think of fungi, we probably think of mushrooms. We gain food and medicine from them, but we may owe an even greater debt in future, suggests Sheldrake: fungi’s extraordinary resilience and adaptability offer potential solutions to many environmental threats, from soil exhaustion to dangerous pollutants. Human society too is entwined with fungi. ‘Lichen are places where an organism unravels into an ecosystem and an ecosystem congeals into an organism,’ writes Sheldrake.įorests, we learn, are underpinned by a so-called ‘wood wide web’ of fungi, which share nutrients with trees, and even spread ‘messages’ about parasites and sickness between plants. Now it’s not only accepted, but researchers have found that the closer they look, the more complicated the picture becomes, with ever more participants revealed. This theory of lichens was once controversial: Peter Rabbit author Beatrix Potter, an accomplished naturalist, dismissed it firmly (Sheldrake fills his book with such compelling cameos). This isn’t one organism but a collaboration of two, fungi and algae joining together. Take lichen – the flaky, scaly, papery stuff that grows on walls and trees in shades of lurid yellow and pearly blue. Or perhaps distinct is the wrong word: fungi, with their talent for entering symbiotic relationships with other living things, dissolve categories in the same way rot can eat timber. For a long time they were classified as plants, yet they are their own distinct type. The role of fungi in nature is only beginning to be truly understood. This beautifully written and illustrated book answers those questions, and leaves even more dazzling puzzles and possibilities in their place. ‘A solid log becomes soil, a lump of dough rises into bread, a mushroom erupts overnight – but how?’ After this book, nothing will seem the same again, particularly not the shrink-wrapped punnet of portobellos in your weekly shop.īiologist Merlin Sheldrake has long been fascinated by fungi, and their power to transform, whether through decay, fermentation (yeast is a kind of microscopic fungus), intoxication or growth. Mushrooms – the magic kind – are known to alter perception. THE MAIL ON SUNDAY, September 6th 2020 Entangled Life Biologist Merlin Sheldrake has long been fascinated by fungi, and their power to transform, whether through decay, fermentation, intoxication or growth By Sarah Ditum

Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake