Discover the Fascinating Map of Fungi: An Introduction to the Huge Mushroom Kingdom

Right here on Open Cul­ture, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Area of Sci­ence’s elab­o­fee data­graph­ic maps of such huge fields of intel­lec­tu­al endeav­or as math­e­mat­ics, physics, com­put­er sci­ence, quan­tum physics, quan­tum com­put­ing, chem­istry, biol­o­gy, and med­i­cine. Over time, the collection’ cre­ator Dominic Wal­li­man has branched out, because it had been, even to king­doms of the nat­ur­al world, like crops. With Plan­tae down, which of the oth­er 5 has he tak­en on subsequent? That ques­tion is answered in the video above, which intro­duces Area of Sci­ence’s new Fas­ci­nat­ing Map of Enjoyable­gi.

Sure, this large map depicts the realm of the hum­ble mush­room, which “shares the for­est with the crops and the ani­mals, but it surely’s not a plant, and it’s not an ani­mal.” And the mush­room itself, like we’re used to see­ing sprout­ing beneath our ft, is simply a small a part of the organ­ism: the remaining “lives hid­den, out of sight, under floor. Beneath each mush­room is a enjoyable­gal internet­work of hair-like strands known as the myceli­um,” which begins as a spore.

The large­ly various “fruit­ing bod­ies” that they push out of the sur­face have just one job: “to dis­perse the spores and develop the following gen­er­a­tion.” However solely ten per­cent of enjoyable­gi species actu­al­ly do that; the remaining don’t professional­duce any­factor we’d rec­og­nize as mush­rooms in any respect.

About 150,000 species of enjoyable­gi have been dis­cov­ered to this point. Although inan­i­mate, they man­age to do rather a lot, resembling sup­ply­ing nutri­ents to crops (or killing them), gen­er­at­ing chem­i­cals which have confirmed excessive­ly use­ful (or not less than con­scious­ness-expand­ing) to people, hijack­ing the ner­vous sys­tems of arthro­pods, and even sur­viv­ing in out­er area. And naturally, “due to their abil­i­ty to con­cen­trate nutri­ents from with­within the soil, enjoyable­gi are an excel­lent supply of meals for us and plenty of oth­er ani­mals.” Mycol­o­gists esti­mate that there stay not less than two or three mil­lion extra species “on the market in nature wait­ing to be dis­cov­ered.” No less than a number of of them, one hopes, will grow to be tasty.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Stun­ning, Hand-Illus­trat­ed E book of Mush­rooms Drawn by an Over­regarded nineteenth Cen­tu­ry Feminine Sci­en­tist

The Beau­ti­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed Atlas of Mush­rooms: Edi­ble, Sus­pect and Poi­so­nous (1827)

The Mush­room Col­or Atlas: An Inter­ac­tive Internet Website Lets You Discover the Incred­i­ble Spec­trum of Col­ors Cre­at­ed from Enjoyable­gi

Dying-Cap Mush­rooms are Ter­ri­fy­ing and Unstop­pable: A Wild Ani­ma­tion

Björk Takes You on a Jour­ney into the Huge King­dom of Mush­rooms with the New Doc­u­males­tary Enjoyable­gi: Internet of Life

How Mush­room Time-Laps­es Are Filmed: A Glimpse Into the Pio­neer­ing Time-Lapse Cin­e­matog­ra­phy Behind the Internet­flix Doc­u­males­tary Fan­tas­tic Enjoyable­gi

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives embody the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the e-book The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by way of Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social internet­work for­mer­ly generally known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.