Mushrooms are not only strange and intriguing, they and other fungi are vital to life on Earth. James Fair finds out more about this astonishing group of organisms from biologist and author Merlin Sheldrake. <\/p>
Cycling through a woodland one Sunday evening in early June, I was brought to a shuddering halt by the sight of a large creamy coloured mushroom the size of a dinner plate that had recently sprouted from a tree stump like an alien flower. Just a week later, passing along the same track, I found that the mushroom had collapsed in on itself like a badly cooked souffl\u00e9.\u00a0<\/p>
Fungi<\/a> are startlingly different from other life forms on Earth \u2013 something that Merlin Sheldrake noticed early in life. His childhood curiosity was piqued by these bizarre, largely invisible organisms that seemed to have so much power to transform one thing into another. \u201cThey appear very fast, and then they vanish again,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s a mystery to them \u2013 where do they come from, where are they going?\u201d\u00a0<\/p> Merlin is now a biologist specialising in fungi, and his book Entangled Life<\/a>, along with his movie Fungi: Web of Life<\/a> (narrated by Bj\u00f6rk), brilliantly explain this and other astonishing properties of fungi \u2013 and their astounding importance to other life forms on our planet. <\/p>