Fungi For The Future
Why Mushrooms Are Important To Our Ecological Salvation
You know those little freckled, white, sometimes blue, edible, but also sometimes poisonous mushrooms you can see at your feet if you are in the right place at the right time? What do you know about them? What comes to mind when you think about mushrooms?
In responding to a survey, a group of Whittier College students and professors came up with a variety of answers when asked about mushrooms. Some think they might help with anxiety, fight diabetes, mitigate against adverse health conditions, and are good for weight loss. Others mentioned they are an essential pizza topping, that they glow in the dark, are used for medicine, and can be the cause of a terrifying, psychedelic experience at a Grateful Dead Chinese New Year’s concert. What else can do all that?
These responses are pretty much what you’d expect to hear when you ask people about mushrooms. What no one mentioned, however, was what an increasing number of scientists and biologists are saying — that mushrooms may be critical to our ecological salvation.
So again, those little mushrooms down at your feet, when you walk past them they know you are there. “When you walk across landscapes, it leaps up in the aftermath of your footsteps trying to grab debris. Mycelium forms when a mushroom decays, the cells then extend underground up to eight miles,” explains mycologist/entrepreneur Paul Stamets in his 2008 TED Talks, “6 ways mushrooms can save the world.”
Mycelium is basically the fungal network that grows into a root-like, mass-branching structure called a hyphae. When it collects debris, it helps remove toxins from the environment. Stamets explains that mycelium have lungs and stomachs that he calls extended neurological membranes that can absorb oxygen. The mycelium’s cell wall absorbs water when the soil is fused, acting as tiny wells and within these wells microbial communities begin to form, “The spongy soil not only resists erosion, but sets up a microbial universe that gives rise to a plurality of other organisms.”
The cycle of a mushroom is instrumental in generation life. However, every cycle of a fungus is different. The mycelial cycle can be as short as 1–2 days to thousands of years. That is one reason why some varieties of mushrooms are rare to find. In case you didn’t understand Stamet’s explanation of the cycle of a mushroom and why it matters, here’s a breakdown.
Stage 1: Spores
Mushrooms send out spores (a reproductive cell). The spores burst out of the mushroom gills (underside of the mushroom). When they land on soil, plants, trees, or any organic condition the spores germinate (grow).
Stage 2: Spore Germination
Fungi branches grow and absorb nutrients from the soil, allowing the fungi to grow and then thrive.
Stage 3: Mycelium
Absorbs nutrients from soil and water and then provides those elements to plants and trees in order to thrive.
Stage 4: Button stage
Mushroom is halfway through development!
Stage 5: Mushroom has grown!
Mycelium threads through soil to break down organic matter and provide nutrients to plants and trees. Think of mushrooms as the fruit of mycelium. Much like the branches and vines that grow apples or grapes, mycelium functions like twisty branches or roots that support the earth underneath its surface.
With sustainability becoming the catchphrase for how we humans can approach living on the earth without destroying it, there has been a growing consciousness that we have to think about the web of life in ecological terms.
As Stamets puts it, “If we don’t get our act together and come in commonality and understanding with the organisms that sustain us today, not only will we destroy those organisms but we will destroy ourselves.”
Whittier College English Professor Tony Barnstone, is a renowned eco poet who applies poetry to the task of imagining a more ecologically sound world. Not surprisingly, he shared a poetic perspective about mushrooms. He recommended Sylvia Plath’s poem, Mushrooms, and said,“Poetically mushrooms manifest the ‘many’ coming up in the surface and above the surface. We inherit the earth, these mushrooms, ‘little nudgers’ are pushing things into the air and they are taking over the earth from below.”
In the introduction to The Ghost of Paradise, a book of poems by Los Angeles poets that Barnstone edited, he talks about mushrooms as a metaphor. “The largest organism on the planet is a mushroom that has spread underground… We think it is small because we can only see the many individual sprouts thumbing out of the soil. In the same way, the poems selected for the special issue focused on Los Angeles poets…connect underground the larger poem in which the images of one poet keep mushrooming up in the poems of others.”
So mushrooms are metaphors in poetry and in real life. They are subtle because we only see what’s above the surface. Their strength and power is in the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. They give back to their environments as much or more than they receive.
The Netflix documentary, Fantastic Fungi, delves into the “…magical, mysterious and medicinal world of fungi and their power to heal, sustain and contribute to the regeneration of life on Earth that began 3.5 billion years ago.”
Because ecosystems work together to protect the Earth from environmental harm, greater biodiversity makes for a more ecologically secure planet. To protect the planet and our human race, it’s crucial to encourage biodiversity through the creation of rich soils. One easy way to do that is by simply allowing fungi to grow. That means embracing decomposition–allowing dead trees to rot instead of removing them, for example. The decomposition feeds mycelium and mycelium oxygenate the soil.
Mushroom have also been engineered to create biomaterials that can play a part in cleaning up our environment.
Paul Stamet’s Ted Talk discussed how mushrooms were a part of an oil spill cleanup experiment.
“There were four piles saturated with diesel and other petroleum waste: one was a control pile; one pile was treated with enzymes; one pile was treated with bacteria; and our pile we inoculated with mushroom mycelium. The mycelium absorbs the oil…six weeks later, all the tarps were removed, all the other piles were dead, dark and stinky. We came back to our pile, it was covered with hundreds of pounds of oyster mushrooms, and the color changed to a light form…They’re very large. They’re showing how much nutrition that they could’ve obtained. But something else happened…They sporulated, the spores attracted insects, the insects laid eggs, eggs became larvae. Birds then came, bringing in seeds, and our pile became an oasis of life.”
These gateway species (squirrels, gophers, birds) open the door for other biological communities. Moreover, the mushrooms were able to clean up oil! They cleaned up the nasty oil spill and created a new life!
As consumers some of us may know that fast fashion is a major taxation to our Earth’s environment. It is continuing to pull us away from becoming a sustainable world. Some people are less educated about this topic than others. Therefore, our consumption habits may take a long time till fast-fasion brands such as Zara, Adidas, Forever 21, H&M, SHEIN either go out of business or change their practices.
You probably don’t think fashion and mushrooms belong in the same sentence, but mycelium is being marketed as an alternative to leather. In 2018 Bolt Threads debuted Mylo. Mylo is a bio-based leather alternative that is not harmful to the environment. The company employs green chemistry and grows it mycelium using a “vertical farming facility using 100% renewable energy.” Choosing more sustainable alt-leather sich as renewable mycelium over synthetic materials is to “unleather.”
In April 2021, Adidas became the first-ever shoe company to parnter with Mylo. Adidas debuted the Stan Smith Mylo, opening the door to a more sustainable way to satisfy our sneaker jones.
The wonders of mushroom aren’t just under your feet, though. Mushrooms like shiitake and oyster mushrooms can be used for insulation.
Umm what? Yep, and they’re waterproof and fireproof. It is called Mycofoam.
The process of creating mycofoam starts with agricultural waste. The waste is then stored and cleaned, and finally combined with mycelium. Mycofoam can revolutionize the way we build homes and infrastructures in the future.
So, mushrooms help other plants grow, create new life, can trip you out, help your hunger, health, and help our planet. Whatever you thought about mushrooms before, you may have, like a mushroom popping out from the soil, only scratched the surface.
Take this fun quiz to discover your mushroom personality!
