A Brief Fungal Foray
The symbiotic relationships between fungi and the rest of the ecosystem could hold the answer to life, the universe and everything, says Graham Burnett in this article reprinted from Glomalin issue one…
Perhaps it is understandable that our culture often regards fungi with suspicion and even fear. Neither plant nor animal, there is something alien about the way their ghostly white mycelial strands spread under the soil surface and produce fruiting bodies, erupting apparently at random as mushrooms and toadstools in all manner of strange and grotesque forms. We tend to associate the fungal queendom with mystery, decay and death, yet despite the fact that we really don’t know that much about them (as many as 90 per cent of fungi species are still currently undescribed) and that some are indeed extremely poisonous, our mycophobia is misplaced. We humans actually have more in common with fungi than we do plants, sharing ancestry as a sub-branch of the eukaryote domain some 650 million years ago. Human history is interwoven with the mycelial web – without fungi and yeasts we wouldn’t have bread, cheese, beer, wine, miso, penicillin, and literally thousands of other medicines, ferments and foodstuffs, and their potential as cancer treatments and in the bioremediation of pollution, nuclear waste and oil spills are only just being discovered or recognised…
Another thing we have in common is that both animals and fungi are heterotrophic: we are unable to produce our own food. Unlike plants we lack chlorophyll and thus cannot photosynthesise to create complex carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water by using sunlight. Instead we need to obtain our nutrients ‘second hand’ by using digestive enzymes, although fungi have an external ‘stomach’ that breaks down their food before absorption. They do this in a number of different ways: Saprophytic fungi feed on dead wood such as fallen branches and logs, breaking down tough cellulose and lignins into rich humus from which fresh growth will spring – without saprophytes such as oyster and shitake mushrooms the world would be buried deep beneath undecomposed fallen tree trunks. Parasitic fungi are those that attach themselves to a living host to obtain nourishment, a one-way transaction from which the tree gains nothing and can in fact be harmful to them. Symbiotic fungi on the other hand obtain their food via mycorrhizal (from the Latin, meaning the joining of fungi (myco) and root (rhiza)) relationships. First developing at least 450 million years ago when the first green algae began to move from the seas onto the land, these interconnections now occur amongst over 90% of plant species. Our understanding of such associations is still very much evolving – I have seen gardening books from as recently as the 1940s which still label mycorrhizal fungi as parasitic rather than symbiotic, and encourage the diligent gardener to get rid of them by extreme means including dousing the garden with fungicides. Even today most literature about mycorrhizae uses language reflecting a mindset of patriarchal dominance and reductionism, often describing the mycellium in terms of ‘invading’, ‘taking over’ or ‘colonising’ the plant roots. Feminist mycologist Lauren Olean prefers the idea of ‘Myconsent’. This is a whole new way of beginning to think about the true complexity of relationships in the natural world, based on recent findings suggesting mycelia actively ask for positive consent before penetrating the plants’ cell wall by sending out chemical messages of intent beforehand, and will only work in conjunction with the plant once permission is granted to make that intimate conjoining a beneficial (and who knows, maybe even pleasurable?) experience for all parties. Through this collaboration the fungi is able to obtain the photosynthesised carbohydrates it requires for food from the plant. In return the fungi provides the plant with essential nutrients including nitrogen and phosphorous as well as moisture otherwise out of reach by creating what is effectively a secondary extended fungal root system covering up to 700 times more soil area than the plants’ own roots. But that’s only the beginning as the mycorrhiza create a communication network of unimaginable complexity beneath the soil surface, connecting trees, fungi and other organisms in such a way that it makes more sense to think of the healthy forest, orchard or garden eco-system as one super-organism rather than a collection of discreet individuals.
Fungal hyphae are composed of threadlike cells typically between 2 and 10 micrometers in diameter. Although up to 50 times finer than the very smallest plant root hairs, the mycelial strands found in a healthy woodland ecosystem can provide up to half of its living biomass, whilst the total length of the mycorrhizal hyphae in the top ten centimeters of the world’s soil is estimated to be 4.5 x 1017 kilometers, or around half the width of our galaxy – an astronomical figure in every sense of the word. Sometimes referred to as ‘Nature’s Internet’ or the ‘Wood Wide Web’, information and nutrients are constantly flowing around these systems. For example if trees in one part of the forest are lacking in nitrogen or phosphorous other trees can physically direct those nutrients to them from places where there is a surplus, thereby actively nurturing weaker members of the forest community. Similarly, if a tree’s foliage is being damaged by the activity of over-enthusiatic browsing deer it can transmit warning messages to other trees often hundreds of yards away, prompting them to start producing nasty tasting phenols that the deer don’t like to eat. Recent discoveries about the Wood Wide Web may even provide solutions to climate change. In 1996 USDA soil scientist Sara Wright identified a substance called glomalin, a by-product of the nutrient transactions between plant roots and certain mycorrhizal fungi. This is a sticky glycoprotien that glues soil particles together to give it structure, and in addition increases the capacity of the soil to store carbon by up to 45 per cent. Environmentalists quite rightly exhort us to plant more trees to combat global warming, but it’s actually the mycorrhizal fungi rather than the trees themselves that are doing the heavy lifting when it comes to taking CO2 out of the atmosphere. Mind-blowing stuff, and we’ve still barely scratched the surface…
Could it be that these mycorrhizal networks go beyond simply symbiotic relationships and are in fact practising natural forms of synergistic mutual cooperation from which we humans could also learn and develop new ways of organising socially? In his book Radical Mycology, Peter McCoy paraphrases Kropotkin’s anarchist evolutionary thesis of Mutual Aid from a fungal perspective:
“The concept that life is a constant fight for the next rung in the evolutionary ladder is contradictory to the everyday experience of nature. Communication and collaboration amongst animals, plants and microbes is vital to the health of each individual as well as the entire ecosytems upon which they depend. As the world’s great connectors, mycelial networks exemplify the universal principle of mutual aid. They act as a clear model for connecting communities and ideas to help reverse the problems of reductionism.”
Graham Burnett.
This article is an extract from Glomalin issue one: Patchwork Orchard, available now at the special price of just £5.00. It has also appeared in a slightly edited form in The Idler magazine
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A Brief Fungal Foray The symbiotic relationships between fungi and the rest of the ecosystem could hold the answer to life, the universe and everything, says Graham Burnett in this article reprinted from Glomalin issue one… Perhaps it is understandable … Continue reading →
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