Sheldrake brilliantly weaves a narrative to reframe our understanding of the fabric of life, extending the boundaries of our identity in the process. Entangled Life positively bristles with insight, dry humour and a passionately curious intelligence. This is a landmark achievement with profound implications for how we collectively contribute to shaping a sustainable future for the whole of life on the planet.”

Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds

Entangled Life is a remarkable piece of work that manages to be at once scholarly and visionary and yet remains deeply engaging and enjoyable. Sheldrake provides a new and penetrating analysis of the fungal kingdom of life that will be a greatly enriching read for all students of the living world.” Entangled Lifeis a revelation. It is a radical, hopeful and important book and I couldn’t put it down. With elegance, wit and clarity Sheldrake engages us in the hidden world of fungi, a miraculous web of connections, interactions and communication that changes the way we need to look at life, the planet and ourselves.”This book is as hard to put down as a thrilling detective novel, and one of the best works of popular science writing that I have enjoyed in years. Sheldrake has a gift of explaining very complex concepts and serving it all up in such an engaging way that the reader forgets that they are not supposed to understand this stuff.” The questions grow more complicated. Mycorrhizal fungi are species whose mycelia penetrate and entangle themselves with plant roots. A symbiotic exchange occurs, in which the photosynthesising plant feeds the mycelium with carbon, and receives from it nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrients. I nearly wrote “receives in return”. Descriptions of this relationship can barely reject the language of bargains. There is frequent adjustment. Plants funnel chemical information from the air to the fungus, whose mycelia bring similar signals to the plant from underground. In woodland, the network, involving numerous species, can be so extensive and dense that trees detect what happens to each other across long distances. Some people call this the “Wood Wide Web”. Unputdownable, this extraordinary work explores the awesome range of activities of fungi: enabling the first life on land; interacting in countless ways with other life forms; shaping human history and potentially safeguarding our future. At once rigorously scientific and boldly imaginative, it raises fundamental questions about the many natures of life on Earth.”

Fungi - Medical Microbiology - NCBI Bookshelf Basic Biology of Fungi - Medical Microbiology - NCBI Bookshelf

Nearly 2400 species are illustrated in full colour, with detailed notes on how to correctly identify them, including details of similar, confusing species. Fungi are everywhere, and Merlin Sheldrake is an ideal guide to their mysteries. He's passionate, deeply knowledgeable, and a wonderful writer." Some kinds of polypores have been used in dyeing of fabrics and for drying fishermen's artificial flies. The list of uses for fungi seems almost endless. Oh yes... and for aesthetic value (beauty) their form and colour diversity certainly rival flowers! The list of benefits we derive from fungi also goes on and on. One thing, however, could not go on without fungi, life on Earth would be impossible not just for us but for most other creatures with the possible exception of bacteria! Mycology, Fungal Taxonomy and Conservation Legislation The Science of Fungi Where to find: Usually found low on the trunk of old, living oak trees and sweet chestnut trees, and sometimes on their stumps. Recommended Reading/Guides: Playful, strange, intensely philosophical… [Sheldrake’s] central vision of the interconnectedness of all life-forms feels shiveringly prescient.”

The tips circulate “information”, and, in response, the mycelium makes advantageous changes to its behaviour. This is more than mere chemical reaction. Here is a responsive entity with interests that its actions can serve or harm. Sheldrake tries out the idea of swarm-intelligence, but a swarm consists of separate individuals, whereas the network of fused or entangled hyphae functions as a physical whole – or much more like a physical whole. Studying fungi makes these lines harder to draw.

8 Astounding Books About Mushrooms and The Fungal World: 8 Astounding Books About Mushrooms and

From bread to booze to the very fiber of life, the world turns on fungus, and Sheldrake provides a top-notch portrait." Merlin Sheldrake, a mycologist who studies underground fungal networks, carries us easily into these questions with ebullience and precision. His fascination with fungi began in childhood. He loves their colours, strange shapes, intense odours and astonishing abilities, and is proud of the way this once unfashionable academic field is challenging some of our deepest assumptions. Entangled Life is a book about how life-forms interpenetrate and change each other continuously. He moves smoothly between stories, scientific descriptions and philosophical issues. He quotes Prince and Tom Waits. This book... has a perfect reader in its author... who has a precise, slightly husky voice and an allusive, almost poetic cast of mind. His personal involvement in his tour of the magical mystery of mushrooms is made evident in his thoughtful, amused narration."Eugenia Bone’s Mycophilia is a love letter to the fungal world and the mushroom foraging community. Having served as president of the New York Mycological Society, Bone knows this community intimately. Therefore, her book details the gamut of foragers: from amateur enthusiasts out on the trails to the hardcore finders who are part of the commercial industry. Along the way, she provides a social history of mushroom use in cooking and medicine. However, the best parts of Mycophilia are seeing Bone in action. She documents her travels with foragers, conversations with restaurateurs and those in the industry, and, most importantly, her unabashed love of mushrooms. The Way Through the Woods: On Mushrooms and Mourning by Long Litt Woon were categorised as mushrooms. Also significant is the fact that most fungi are neither good to eat nor poisonous: they are simply inedible - in the same way that cardboard cannot really be classed as good to eat even when its manufacturing process is such that it contains nothing that is toxic to human beings. Given the remarkably rapid appearance of quite large fungus fruitbodies, which could emerge Boletales are interesting, and many are edible. Boletus edulis (above), known as Cep, Cépe, or Penny Bun Bolete (King Bolete in the USA, and Porcini in Italy) is most highly rated. Other boletes with pores include Suillellus satanas, Boletus badius, Suillus luteus, Suillus bovinus, Leccinum scabrum and Strobilomyces strobilaceus (synonym Strobilomyces floccopus). Some boletoid fungi have gills - Gomphidius roseus, Chroogomphus rutilus and Hygrophoropsis aurantiaca are examples. Paxillus species have recently been split up, too, and DNA sequencing has provided the evidence necessary for recategorisation. Paxillus involutus is the Brown Rollrim, now known to be deadly poisonous. Borrelli-Persson, Laird (25 January 2021). "Iris van Herpen: Spring 2021 Couture". Vogue . Retrieved 4 February 2021.