Forest From The Fungi
There is a magical forest floating through the air, where strange forms and textures await their special moment to emerge and flourish in the most unexpected places. Is this a fanciful passage from a Brothers Grimm fairy tale? Nope. It’s quite real.
Born in Athens, Greece in 1901, Adrienne Segur (center) illustrated children’s articles in the daily French newspaper Le Figaro from 1936 to 1939 / Illustrations by Adrienne Segur
When French visual artist Adrienne Segur put pen and paint to board and canvas in the mid-twentieth century, her wildest imagination may have struggled to visualize what nature creates within a few short hours wherever temperature, humidity and an unsuspecting host set a stage for spectacle. As her meticulous, detailed visions of tiny fairies, cute furry animals, fantastic floral motifs and surreal amphibian humans graced the pages of European newspapers and books, a show of real-life surreality appeared throughout wild forests around the world. Fortunately for us all in the 21st century, the show never closed.
With a wizard’s conjuring smile and wave of wand, I invite you to enter my awe-inspiring Pacific Northwest community, home to tens of thousands of individual habitant species thriving in the great and wondrous Kingdom of Fungi.
Illustration on left from suwalls.com
Depart from this surreal hamlet and your journey may last for weeks, even months as you experience a fraction of what the rugged wilderness region of western Washington state offers. The Evergreen State is home to a wide array of fungi, ranging from common disk and stalk mushrooms to odd-shaped varieties resembling tropical coral, golf balls and fancy-skirted Victorian ladies, to stringy molds, microscopic yeasts, fuzzy mildews, brilliant rusts, and bulbous smuts.
To avoid turning this into an academic botany lesson, no official identifications with unpronounceable multisyllabic Latin references will be made. Such an effort would take the ‘fun’ out of what follows, leaving only ‘gi.’
Character illustration by e51778spd on pixiv.net
To begin with, a mushroom is nowhere close to being a plant. In fact, while fungi often appear as visitors from another world, they are very much like us, since humans were once the same primordial organism. Our Homo sapien DNA departed the fungal family home roughly 1.1 billion years ago. Today we share many identical proteins with modern mushrooms. Another point about this unsuspected relationship: humans carry fungal entities on their skin and within their digestive tract as part of normal health. Without fungus, people could not survive.
Mushrooms and other odd-shaped manifestations are the reproductive vehicles for most visible and invisible fungi, rising from the forest floor and out of various tree barks and dead stumps, distributing spores into the air upon maturity. They are also highly interactive, forming biological relationships with a diverse palette of plants, insects, bacteria, and microbes as they set themselves up in the most ingenious of places to take advantage of the neighborhood.
Fungi appearing to a wandering hiker like me evoke endless wonder as to what invisible intelligence determines their appearance, size and color. Trekking through the forest I’ve occasionally asked myself, “Why is this one here – and why now, but not yesterday?”
The fall season of 2021 brought forth a wide spectrum of the most intriguing fungi I’ve ever seen so, if you have a few minutes, I’d like to reveal some fungal friends discovered across the foothills of Cougar Mountain, Washington.
Extensive fungal networks exist beneath the soil and within dying trees. What we see is only about 20% of what exists behind the scenes.
NOT AS THEY SEEM
With apparent beauty can come parasitic peril in an offbeat comedic style, a fungus trait the ancient Greeks and Romans wove into a character archetype within their comedies. In 421 BC, Eupolis of Athens took first place in a writing competition with his play Kolakes, referring to a flattering, mooching character as “kolax.” In the 4th century AD, further refinement cast the character as a sponging fellow diner.
The dictionary definition of a parasite has it attaching to a superior for its own advantage, specifically for a free meal as fungus does. Many of us have come across such characters in life, perhaps dressed in flashy wardrobe, complimenting the host with a toothy smile. Beware, it may be the fungus emerging from deep within as they hug those within range, much the same as a tree growth witnessed along a trail.
ENDLESS POSSIBILITES
Nature is the supreme master of creativity. It has appeared to me, while photographing these intriguing relatives of ours, the mother lode of bizarre-beautiful shapes, textures and colors may be in the fungal realm. There seem to be no limits as to where they appear, nor in what form they materialize, sometimes in a matter of a few hours. On several occasions I’ve walked across an open pasture near sunset, return the following morning to discover some of the fully developed subjects in these photos.
All the images in this blog were captured with an iPhone 12 Pro, enabling the tiny triple lens group to position at scurrying beetle level. Imagine wandering the forest floor on six spindly legs, coming upon one of these spectacles rising from decaying leaves or upon a rotting log. Pure bug bliss.
The necessity of functional creativity abounds throughout the wilderness. While we humans may not always understand and apply that natural decree, it’s always present outdoors. This is something to learn from in our own endeavors as we design and craft solutions on a planet with increasing challenges. In nature, clever, multifaceted efficiency is paramount as life forms focus on survival amidst shifts in weather and sudden wind. Fungi in all its forms demonstrates stunning resilience to most weather conditions.
Who wouldn’t want to dance and leap atop pancakes (left), or shelter from the rain beneath sémillon Alice In Wonderland mushrooms?
FUNGUS AMONG US
One cannot fully portray the fungal sphere without highlighting the concept of community. Fairy rings, linear strands, and delicate fungus family clusters can often be observed in a Washington fall season forest. Dozens of frail, paper-thin mushrooms the size of pencil erasers occasionally assemble like condominiums upon a hill. Lone monster-sized mushrooms are somewhat of a rarity, and while spectacular, can be eerie and foreboding on close examination. Perhaps the creepiest quality of a large mushroom is the silence of its majesty. One can almost hear it breathe with an otherworldly hiss.
As a young boy I recall spying a giant white-capped mushroom with several smaller companions on our front lawn. As I slowly approached The Big One, it was as if the foreboding object was an alien saucer, having landed in the wee hours of the morning. I grabbed a stick and carefully nudged the rubbery cap to see if it might move. While poking, I feared it could jump at me, or shatter into grotesque, mangled pieces to scamper across the lawn. But I needed to know. The strange umbrella structure merely flexed a bit with surprising resilience for having grown so suddenly out of nowhere overnight.
While examining the sleeping giant, I noticed imperfections: cracks and scars and brown bumps in random areas, suggesting some kind of altercation had occurred – but by what? I considered it could have been a marauding troop of antagonistic ants, or maybe a mouse thinking the cap was a trampoline, or even some type of malady I might catch if direct contact were made. My imagination flew all around as my viewpoint descended downward to grass level where I took in quite a surprise.
Most unexpected were hundreds of radiating underside gills, which for some reason gave me instant chills. Getting a grip on my trepidation, I began to notice imperfect perfection from every angle, later becoming an element I observed time and again throughout forests and their myriad life forms. It was from this early encounter I later understood my human perception of perfect beauty as merely an illusion of mass imperfection – a fantasy projection I placed on natural places and things.
A frosted, bright orange golf ball, exquisite sepia doilies, and a happy amber family snug within a tree crevice showcase fungal creativity.
FLEXIBLE TO CHANGE
The adaptive nature of fungi is astonishing. I have yet to find a predictable pattern as to where little and large fungal creations appear. Since microscopic spores are ever-present in the air, any damp location holds potential for an appearance by a slippery shape shifter. I wonder if somewhere there is a big room beneath the forest floor where a Chief Fungus Designer has a cadre of crazy, hand-waving sketch artists and calculating mycological engineers developing the next generation of bizarre and fabulous fungiforms.
Aside from their out-of-this-world appearances, fungi can thrive in environments where high salt concentration and deep-sea sediment might suffocate conventional plant life. As brave space travelers, scientists have found fungi to withstand ionizing, ultraviolet and cosmic radiation. Some Australian fungal varieties glow green after dark. Other locales around the world have varieties glowing in white, blue and amber bioluminescence, while a hearty few others bask in 400°C hydrothermal vents on the floors of global oceans.
Perhaps the most sinister and haunting examples are the fungi beginning life as motile, aquatic zoospores swimming up to and attaching to their unsuspecting amphibian host. An unfortunate side effect of this life-sucking behavior is a worldwide decline in amphibian populations. However, recall the parasitic nature of many fungal species, consuming everything from massive trees to the over-ripe peach in your fruit basket - a macabre action essential to the survival of a larger ecosystem. Nature has a knack for re-balancing toward equilibrium, even when a situation seems counterproductive at first glance.
But fear we must not, for the path of fungi is merely an eternal struggle for survival across a planet where every living entity experiences some element of challenge and compromise. Fairy tales from our childhood remind us of our own place within the vast, diverse forest of life, wherein we humans are cast in bit parts as protagonists and antagonists confronting sometimes impossible odds – with survival as the goal.
PARALLEL GOALS
A consistent theme woven through every fantasy tale is that of a glorious hero and gruesome villain - the brilliant spark and demonic dark pursuing the same goal in their own way, though from different perspectives. Neither is right or wrong. Neither is better, smarter or more powerful than the other. Both often wear a cape, carry a sword, shout strong words, and attract loyal entourages of like-minded souls. In story form we often cheer the perceived hero without understanding the villain’s equally viable insight and way of seeing the world in an alternate way.
Perhaps a community of fungi can show its human relatives how dangerous beauty conveys an important story beyond what is initially seen. As we fear ingesting a poisonous mushroom, it may be completely benign, though identical in appearance to one with the power to drop us in a minute. How do we know which one to trust, and which to push away?
By holding “respectives” in the forefront of our daily doings (respect toward other perspectives), we elevate our chance of establishing genuine truths while calming a world gone mad - a place where what appears heroic may in fact be villainous, and vice versa. Being open to and applying alternate perspectives and solutions after exploring all options becomes beneficial in the long term. Sometimes it’s best to be big and bold, while at other times, demure in the background, observing.
This commanding ‘Shaggy Parasol’ measures five inches in diameter, whereas the petite white mushrooms to the right are a half inch in across.
TAKE A WALK
As we enter a new year, how about we join together to take a long walk through a thriving forest, botanical garden, city park, or basic back yard to marvel at the silent, imperfect clash of good and evil. Cast aside our ethnic origins, national and political alignments, and especially our social media sound bite expertise. Place ourselves within a centering peace amidst a living, functioning garden, far from the fantastic tales propagated in the news and agitating hearsay.
Every day nature shows us and guides us, never telling a soul how to thrive amidst a never-ending onslaught of biological conflict. Indeed, some fungi may be parasitic, but then are some humans not? Some fungi may be poisonous, though are some humans not?
With every second we breathe deadly fungal spores, debilitating bacteria and mutant viruses witch have been present across millennia, and by some innate system within ourselves, we survive to walk the forest of another day. How can this be? Could it be we possess something invisible to thwart the invisible menace?
ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL
Humans have the adaptive ability to equalize their well-being as they reconfigure and re-imagine from within for the benefit of future generations. It’s the incredible evolutionary nature of DNA.
A mushroom emerging from a fallen tree becomes essential to the survival of the forest. Fungus is neither good nor evil, or inhibited by fear as it follows natural guidance - boldly doing what fungus does. What might happen if humans took a cue from their fungi relatives and looked to nature for solutions?
What can we learn and apply to our own lives by becoming naturally resilient and strong while being who we innately are, rising within our human forest as we evolve into wondrous, creative, independent forms? How might we quickly grow ourselves as awe-inspiring mushrooms do, without fear to greet tomorrow’s dawn with prudent insight? Might we then ask ourselves what can empower us to cease viewing one another as good or evil heroes and villains?
Let the coming year be a journey of discovery through a forest of sharing, listening, questioning, and acting respectfully, illustrating for all of humanity the equilibrium forests around the world show us every day as they silently thrive.
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