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While reading new (and even old) books I sometimes get ideas for weird science fiction stories I could write based on the factual information pouring forth from the pages into my eyes and is then shunted to some repository within my brain, where it is somehow mysteriously mixed about and only much later brought to my attention... often to then be edited, judged, and usually discarded.
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan contains facts about foods of which I was completely unaware. It states that mushrooms are still a mystery to us and that we don't know the most basic things about them.
Now, that sparked a story idea... what if these mushrooms actually comprise a complex network of intelligent beings that co-exist with the Earth's familiar plant and animal life and are wholly necessary for the continuation of that familiar life... and one person discovers this fact and that the mushrooms are being threatened by some new human endeavor and so sets out to remedy the threat.
Below is a four-paragraph excerpt from the book:
"Part of the problem is simply that fungi are very difficult to observe. What we call a mushroom is only the tip of the iceberg of a much bigger and essentially invisible organism that lives most of its life underground. The mushroom is the 'fruiting body' of a subterranean network of microscopic
hyphae, improbably long
rootlike cells that thread themselves through the soil like neurons. Bunched like cables, the
hyphae form webs of (still microscopic)
mycelium. Mycologists can't dig up a mushroom like a plant to study its structure because its
mycelium is too tiny and delicate to tease from the soil without disintegrating. ... To see the whole organism of which [the mushroom] is merely a component may simply be impossible. Fungi also lack the comprehensible syntax of plants, the orderly and visible chronology of seed and vegetative growth, flower, fruit, and seed again. The fungi surely have a syntax of their own, but we don't know all its rules, especially the ones that govern the creation of a mushroom, which can take three years or thirty, depending. On what? We don't really know.
"Fungi, lacking chlorophyll, differ from plants in that they can't manufacture food energy from the sun. Like animals, they feed on organic matter made by plants, or by plant eaters. Most of the fungi we eat obtain their energy by one of two means:
saprophytically, by decomposing dead vegetable matter, and
mycorrhizally [like
chanterelles and morels], by associating with the roots of living plants. Among the saprophytes, many of which can be cultivated by inoculating a suitable mass of dead organic matter (logs, manure, grain) with their spores, are the common white button mushrooms,
shiitakes,
cremini,
Portobellos, and oyster mushrooms. Most of the choicest wild mushrooms are impossible to cultivate, or nearly so, since they need living and often very old trees in order to grow, and can take several decades to fruit. The
mycelium can grow more or less indefinitely, in some cases for centuries, without necessarily fruiting. A single fungus recently found in Michigan covers an area of forty acres underground and is thought to be a few centuries old. So inoculating old oaks or pines is no guarantee of harvesting future mushrooms, at least not on a human time scale. Presumably, these fungi live and die on an arboreal time scale.
"
Mycorrhizal fungi have
coevolved with trees, with whom they've worked out a mutually beneficial relationship in which they trade the products of their very different metabolisms. If the special genius of plants is photosynthesis, the ability of chlorophyll to transform sunlight and water and soil minerals into carbohydrates, the special genius of fungi is the ability to break down organic molecules and minerals into simple molecules and atoms through the action of their powerful enzymes. The
hyphae surround or penetrate the plant's roots, providing them with a steady diet of elements in exchange for a drop of simple sugars that the plant synthesizes in its leaves. The network of
hyphae vastly extends the effective reach and surface area of a plant's root system, and while trees can survive without their fungal associates, they seldom thrive. It is thought that the fungi may also protect their plant hosts from bacterial and fungal diseases.
"The talent of fungi for decomposing and recycling organic matter is what makes them indispensable, not only to trees but to all life on earth."
I first became aware of the above described book when I read about it at
Delancey Place -- and the fictional story idea keeps hanging on. Will I write the story?
Maybe . . .
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I had planned to add another segment here, but instead found myself immersed in the pages of a new book.
__________A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go
further then a great idea that inspires no one.--Mary Kay Ash
