Last Sunday, I went to the Assembly Rooms on George Street to watch a film presented by Merlin Sheldrake, renowned mycologist and author. Even though I had already read his bestselling Entangled Life, I was still unprepared for how astonished I would find myself after watching his new film, Fungi: The Web of Life.
Entangled Life contains some fabulous insights into worlds outside the animal kingdom. Did you know, for example, that slime moulds demonstrate “sophisticated, problem-solving behaviours”? Researchers released a slime mould onto a model of the Greater Tokyo area, as the mould spread, it grew around obstacles and formed the most efficient route through the miniature landscape – one that turned out to be nearly identical to Tokyo’s railway system.
Sheldrake, however, is most well-known for his research into mycorrhizae, a term referring to the symbiotic relationships that develop between fungi and plants. Fungi provide plants with nitrogen and phosphorus, almost becoming an extension of the root network. In exchange, the fungus obtains sugars to which it would otherwise not have access.
Despite over 90 per cent of the world’s plants depending on mycorrhizal fungi for their survival, we still know very little about this relationship. If the world of mycorrhizal fungi is an unexplored ocean, then current research has only dabbled in its surface waters. Sheldrake likens the position of the contemporary ecologist to an “extraterrestrial anthropologist,” one who has studied modern humanity for decades but has only now realised that we on planet earth have “something called the internet.” The internet is to us what mycorrhizal relationships are to life beneath the soil.
After learning more about mycorrhizal fungi and the webs of life which they form, it is easy to feel something like a sense of vertigo when walking over a forest floor. One square metre of soil can contain over 150 earthworms. Underground colonies of leafcutter ants can grow to be larger than 30 metres across. Even the mycelium present in a single teaspoon of soil can, when stretched out, reach anywhere from 100 metres to 10 kilometres.
Watching The Web of Life coincided with me reading a book by George Monbiot. In part of Regenesis, Monbiot argues that our relationship with soil – how we think about it, and how we farm it – is accelerating us towards a crisis in global food production. Conventional farming, he argues, has become both too extensive and too intensive – how can we make it less so, whilst still ensuring that worldwide food supplies remain sufficient? As Monbiot recognises, learning about mycorrhizae must be a central part of our transition to a more sustainable and efficient form of food production.
What is it that “keeps the world afloat on this solid sea?”, Sheldrake asked himself as a child. We would all do well to consider this question. Whether or not we know what exactly it is that keeps us floating, we certainly know that the debt we owe to it is great. Fungal, plant and human lives remain as intertwined as ever: moving forward, we must learn to collaborate with, rather than overlook, the fungi in our soil.
Image by Phoenix Han on Unsplash