First Lines of Merlin Sheldrake's "Entangled Life"

 "Fungi are everywhere but they are easy to miss. They are inside you and around you. They sustain you and all that you depend on. As you read these words, fungi are changing the way that life happens, s they have done for more than a billion years. They are eating rock, making soil, digesting pollutants, nourishing and killing plants, surviving in space, inducing visions, producing food, making medicines, manipulating animal behavior, and influencing the composition of the Earth's atmosphere."

- Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life, How fungi make our worlds, change our minds & shape our futures

Sheldrake shares some absolutely fascinating details about fungi - not just mushrooms (which are the fungi's fruit) but also their mycorrhizal networks - in this amazing book. Take two details: The details what (little) we know about how fungi facilitate communication and information sharing between trees (the infamous "wood wide web") or how the symbiotic properties of lichens leads to a breakdown of component parts: "The biological identity of most organisms can't be pried apart from the life of their microbial symbionts." (p 91) I knew mushrooms were having a moment, but learning just how strange their behaviors are, and how little we actually know about how they function, it's hard not to dream about the amazing capabilities this new knowledge unlocks. Highly recommend!