Today’s essay partly comes around thanks to a wonderful series of video essays, exhibitions and talks hosted on the Serpentine museums official youtube site. Many of the speakers helped me to open my eyes to what soil can be and what it means to us as humans and living creatures.

In this text I would like to share with my readers my love for all forms of fungal life. More specifically will I try to sell you on the wonder of soil dwelling fungi! These forms of life, for those that are not aware of it, do not fall within the animal or plant kingdom. But rather form their third kingdom, that of the micilia, here we find mushrooms, molds, lichens and until recently, slime molds. 

The kingdom of micilia is a deeply fascinating one, and one that still holds many mysteries, we so far only know of, and have been able to to catalog a very small percentage of the worlds fungi, lichen and molds. These species are highly adapted and adaptable to the areas in which they inhabit. From the symbiosis between fungi and algae found in the lichen to the rapidly growing single cell organisms of the microfungi, is it truly a varied and complex world of wonder and mystery!

These various kinds of life forms are, while looking a lot like plants, indeed a lot more closely related to the animal kingdom. For one is the micilia not made out of plant fibers, but rather microscopic chitin, the same materials that crustaceans and many insects form their outer shells from. Furthermore, these lifeforms do not perform any form of photosynthesis, instead extracting nutrition from the surrounding areas by sending out acids much in the same way that our stomachs do to ingest nutrition. In this way many fungi and other mycelia have an incredibly important role to play in the decomposition and reuptake of dead organic material, be that animal or plant life.

This essay in particular will focus on the many kinds of micilia, that is the large networks of string-like structures found underground, as well as microfungi, and their impact on soil health. I will begin by defining what I mean with soil, and how it is different from dirt. Dirt in the most simple terms is the combination of clay, organic matter, stones and sand. What makes soil different from dirt, scientifically, is that soil is teeming with life. Soil teems with fungi, insects and thousands of different forms of microbial life, all which does its part to turn dead organic material into nutrition for the plants that grow upon it.

As mentioned before, fungi work to decompose and pick up nutrition from many of the dead organic material found in and on the grounds, from animals to dead flowers and fallen branches. They do this by the spreading of their micilian networks. This not only keeps the ground clear, but also makes sure the minerals and other nutrients found within can be reused by the rest of the ecosystem. Recent science has taught us that these micilian networks are capable of seeking out nearby dead biomatter to feast upon, and will to a much greater extent move in that direction.

Even more so, it is not uncommon for fungi of our forests to create symbiotic relationships with trees, flowers and other plants. In return for sharing some of the nutrition of the decomposition in return for sugar from the plants photosynthesis. Furthermore, it has been shown that the mycelial networks of many fungi have managed to connect several species of trees and other vegetation together, and created a form of communication network between them, sharing nutrition as well as electrical signals, this wondrous discovery will be the topic of a future essay!

While you might rarely see a mushroom body as you wander the woods, know that the soil living fungi is always there, just underneath the surface, and their presence is vital to ours, and every other living organisms existence. Sadly these complex organisms and their relationships to other lives are being disturbed by deforestation, acidification and most of all monoculture farming. Thankfully things are changing, and many interesting projects of so-called permaculture are starting to flourish across the globe, something I would love to return to another day. For now, know that the fungi is everywhere, even if you can’t see it.

Further reading:

https://www.youtube.com/@SerpentineGalleriesUK

Stamets (2019) Fantastic Fungi, ISBN 9781647221720