Psst! Mushroom leather is not actually made from mushrooms – but it is fabulous! Much like our guest this week. Merlin Sheldrake is the biologist and author of the extraordinary book, Entangled Life, How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures.
You might not give fungi much thought, but mycelium networks are working their wonders all around us. And we need them: together with bacteria, fungi are responsible for breaking down organic matter (not to mention their role in helping to building soil and keep plants and trees healthy). Without fungi, nothing would decay. We partner up with fungi to make some of the foods and drinks we love the most (hello, bread and beer). And fungi is also causing quite the buzz in fashion, thanks to the invention of new leather-like materials and plastic alternatives derived from mycelium. Forward-thinking designers from Iris Van Herpen to Stella McCartney have been inspired by fungi’s wonderful properties and intriguing relationships.
Prepare to be wowed by this enlightening conversation that might just change the way you think about everything around you.
THE BOOK. Margaret Atwood is a fan. So are Jeanette Winterson and George Monbiot. Nature writers are all over it. Guardian, New Scientist and Sunday Times reviewers are using words like “enthralling” and “mind-blowing” to describe this book, but actually the superlatives came from every angle - even the Daily Mail likes Entangled Life. Whoa! It’s that good. TIME magazine calls it a "wondrous … a marvellous tour of these diverse and extraordinary life forms.”
Buy it here. Or get the audio book, which the author himself narrates in his mellifluous tones.
NOTES
FUNGI have their own kingdom, distinct from animals, plants and bacteria. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica: there are “about 144,000 known species of organisms of the kingdom Fungi, which includes the yeasts, rusts, smuts, mildews, molds, and mushrooms. There are also many funguslike organisms, including slime molds and oomycetes (water molds), that do not belong to kingdom Fungi but are often called fungi. Many of these funguslike organisms are included in the kingdom Chromista. Fungi are among the most widely distributed organisms on Earth and are of great environmental and medical importance. Many fungi are free-living in soil or water; others form parasitic or symbiotic relationships with plants or animals.”
MYCORRHIIZAL FUNGI. A mycorrhiza is a symbiotic association between a green plant and a fungus. They work together in a way that’s mutually beneficial - the fungi taking sugars from plants ‘in exchange’ for moisture and nutrients gathered from the soil by the fungal strands.
MUSHROOMS are the fruiting bodies of fungi, although only a small fraction of fungi actually produce them, and often only for a short time. Most fungi, as Merlin says, “spend most of their time as mycelial networks. Mycelial networks are branching, fusing networks of tubular cells, and they’re how fungi are able to feed themselves. Animals tend to put food in their bodies, but fungi do it the other way around - they put their bodies inside food! And mycelium is a way for them to do so; it allows them to burrow into whatever they happen to be eating.” Like Merlin’s book! Seriously, watch this:
MYCELIUM is a root-like structure of a fungus consisting of a mass of branching, thread-like HYPHAE. “Under the reproductive structures we know as mushrooms, truffles or crusts, lie a hidden part of the fungus: the mycelium.” Explore more on the Kew Gardens website.
Consider a spore from a simple mushroom, out in a field. The spore germinates and produces a short, initial hypha (called a germ tube). The germ tube grows and branches, each of those early branches grows and branches in turn and the process continues. The following diagram shows this process.
HYPHAL GROWTH (see above) The leftmost figure shows a spore (the black dot) with the short germ tube growing out from it. The next figure shows the scene a little later, with several branchings having occurred by now. The other two figures show later stages in the expansion of the mycelium. Notice how, by repeated branching, the mycelium eventually assumes a circular form as shown in the rightmost figure. That figure also shows that while the hyphae show a very marked outward growth, there are also cross-connections between the outward growing branches. The cross-connections between the radiating hyphae make it easy to move nutrients quickly around the growing mycelium, taking them to wherever they are most needed. Via Australian National Botanical Gardens. More here.
MATERIALS As Merlin says, “It’s as mycelium that fungi tend to find their way into the world of fashion, in the form of new fungal fabrication materials” such as Bolt Threads’ much- talked-about Mylo leather altenarative. That’s why “MUSHROOM LEATHER”, although a popular fash news headline - “BEHOLD THE HERMES $7,000 MUSHROOM BAG!” - is the wrong phrase to use. The material is derived from the mycelium.
Fungi don’t just work with plants. When it comes MYCOFABRICATION, “the fungi are at once ‘technology’ and partners with humans in a new type of relationship.”
In 2021, Hermès launched an “exclusive collaboration with” biotech startup MycoWorks, to create “the first object made with Fine Mycelium, the patented technology from MycoWorks that enhances mycelium as it grows.”
TRIPS Not recommended! Psilocybin is a hallucinogenic chemical found in certain mushrooms known as MAGIC MUSHROOMS. Big in the 1960s, when the psychedellics revolution really took off, with Timothy Leary and all that. These days of course, it’s all about the tech bros MISCRODOSING to get clarity of vision (so they say). Please don’t get us started on Prince Harry. If you want to go down this rabbit hole, start by watching How to Change Your Mind on Netflix. Then order a serve of PAUL STAMETS’S TED Talk for afters.
ROBIN WALL KIMMERER. Highly recommended! The writer Merlin mentions with relation to “the grammar of animacy” (and a hill hilling) is the author of BRAIDING SWEETGRASS, brilliant reading exploring Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Kimmerer, a distinguished botanist and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, argues that words matter, that the languages we speak and think with shape our understanding of ourselves and of the natural world.
“Science polishes the gift of seeing,” she says, but there are costs. It reveals but also conceals. It distances us, turning nature and creatures into something less than they might actually be. “It reduces a being to its working parts.” But much lies beyond our scientific language and remains unnamed and therefore unseen. Via Gettysburg Connection (book review by Will Lane).
Talking of fab things to dive into after this, you need to get across the work of SUZANNE SIMARD, if you haven’t already. She was the one who came up with the concept of the WOOD WIDE WEB. “The Wood Wide Web is a busy network, where [...] elder trees are able to recognize neighbors that are genetically related, or that are kin, and they can send more or less resources to other trees to either favor or disfavor them, depending on the safety of the environment. I have taken to calling these elders “Mother Trees” because they appear to be nurturing their young. Mother Trees thus connect the forest through space and time, just like elders connect human families across generations.” AGGH! So good, right? More here.
Oh, and Merlin’s father is RUPERT SHELDRAKE, and the hard-to-get-head-around science thing Clare tries to remember is MORPHIC RESONANCE, which was dismissed as bonkers back in the day, but is now having it’s day. As these things tend to. Being ahead is tough stuff.
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING. Please do get in touch if you like the show, and help me continue to make it by growing our audience. Sharing it on social media, or just with your friends, rating, reviewing or simply recommending it, makes a huge difference. Find Clare on Instagram @mrspress & Twitter @mrspress