You can’t deny that mycology is a great pastime for hobbyists and professionals alike. There’s so much to learn about mushrooms and so much you can do with them. There truly is more to them than meets the eye. So, what about the secret lives of mushrooms? What facts should you know? What are their secrets? Let us dive in below.
A Mushroom Is the Largest Organism on the Planet
We might be familiar with the gills and stem portions of the mushroom that juts out of the ground. This is the part we work with extensively when we attempt to grow our mushrooms. As it happens, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Did you know that one of the largest mushrooms on the planet—the giant Armillaria ostoyae—lies under the ground and encompasses 2,384 acres in Oregon? The body of the mushroom—the mycelium—can be gigantic and lies just under the surface.
They Can Help Clean Oil Spills
Mushrooms can help clean up our messes. They have zero carbon emissions, and even better, they can transform contaminants and pollutants in the air into inert matter. This is called my core mediation. It can help with wildfires, runoff, and pathogens in the air. Most companies have been slow to adopt it, but it’s an exciting trend that will help us in the future.
They Can Talk to Each Other
Mushrooms can communicate. This is one of the fascinating facts about the secret lives of mushrooms. They talk to each other in a similar way to how humans communicate. The electrical signals that run through their hyphae are strikingly similar to humans. It’s thought that they have a vocabulary of about 50 “words” and can string them together into “sentences” easily. Communication can also occur between trees and flowers. Turns out, fungi are chatty.
In short, these have been some amazing facts about fungi that are bound to rock your world. There will only be more in the future, so watch out. Our fungal friends are bound to amaze us.
