Sandy Doggett: The Mushroom Speaks (2020)
One of the stories in today's press concerns the claim made by fungi boffin [1] Andrew Adamatzky that the electrical impulses sent by mycological organisms through filamentous structures called hyphae, can perhaps be compared to human language and that mushrooms are able to communicate with each other using a vocabulary containing up to fifty terms.
That's astonishing - and I'm always happy to read updates from the fungal world - but I'm not quite sure it constitutes news, as previous researchers and vegetal philosophers already theorised that whilst fungi may give the impression of being silent and secretive, they are actually quite social organisms, sharing information about soil conditions, food sources, and potential dangers on the Wood Wide Web [2].
Or, it seems, simply declaring their own existence: Putresco, ergo sum and death has lent me my body out of the damp black earth ... [3]
Notes
[1] Not an official title, but one used by Nick McDermott in his take on the story; see 'Talking Shitake', in The Sun (6 April 2022): click here.
For an alternative report - which comes with more scientific detail, but lacks an amusing title - see Linda Geddes writing in The Guardian (6 April 2022): click here.
[2] It is now understood that fungi play a positive role in the ecosystem and don't just infect plants, causing disease and decay, but connect with them via hyphae, which spread through the soil and penetrate the tips of plant roots at a cellular level, combining to form what is called a mycorrhiza.
In this way, individual plants are also joined to one another and able to exchange water, carbon, nitrogen, and other essential nutrients and minerals. These complex mycorrhizal networks are known colloquially as the Wood Wide Web. For an interesting essay on this topic, see Robert Macfarlane, 'The Secrets of the Wood Wide Web', in The New Yorker (7 Aug 2016): click here.
[3] As much as I want this to be true, I feel obliged to point out that even Adamatzky concedes the possibility that perhaps fungi aren't actually saying anything. Far more research needs to be done before electrical activity and pulsing behaviour can be interpreted as language.
Bonus: to watch the trailer for The Mushroom Speaks, dir. Marion Neumann, (2021): click here.
For a post on the poetry and politics of the mushroom from November 2014, click here.
