Fungi - an inspiration on so many levels.

(An artical by Alan Rayner - a Doctor in Biological developement and understanding. I have added bits about how things relate - the videos are very interesting)

What does it really mean to be a healthy tree? And what is a diseased tree? And what do fungi have to do with these questions? And how might our answers depend on the environmental context in which we are considering them? This paper outlines the huge variety of ways in which trees and fungi enter into and influence one another's lives as dynamic embodiments of natural energy flow, and what this means for them both individually and collectively in the ecosystems they help to co-create.

“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. Some see nature as all ridicule and deformity…and some scarce see nature at all. But by the eyes of a man of imagination, nature is imagination itself”

- William Blake

Seeing the top botanical garden as a canopy - a vortec, geodesic, fruitful canopy, a continuation of the surrounding trees, brought down and controlled to a human scale.

'Fountains of the Forest'.

What is a Fungus?

“a sickly autumn shone upon the land. Wet and rotten leaves reeked and festered under the foul haze. The fields were spotted with monstrous fungi of a size and colour never matched before – scarlet and mauve and liver and black – it was as though the sick earth had burst into foul pustules. Mildew and lichen mottled the walls and with that filthy crop, death sprang from the watersoaked earth” – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

As with trees, it is all too easy to allow objective vision to take a one-sided view of fungi, which alienates them from their natural neighbourhood. But for fungi this view can all too readily miscast them in the mould of execrable underclass, the destroyers and takers of life. Attention then focuses selectively on how to prevent or remove their appearance, instead of appreciating their significance as the natural world’s great communicators and recyclers, whose role in life’s endings is vital to life’s openings.

If, on the other hand, we come to view fungi as relay channels for energy flow between underworld and outer-world, a much deeper understanding of their role in natural processes of growth, death and decomposition may be possible. Instead of estranging them as some class of lowlife that subsists at the expense or, at best, by courtesy of the trickle down economy of the grandiose, we understand them as riverine channels, veins and arteries delivering and returning lifeblood through the body to and from the hearts of natural ecosystems.

By perceiving the flow-forms of fungi in this way, as energetic configurations of figure in ground and ground in figure that connect within, to and from those energetic configurations of figure in ground and ground in figure that comprise the flow-forms of trees, we may be better placed to question their role in the health and disease of those they include within their natural neighbourhood.

A Question of Health and Disease: How Do Trees and Fungi Relate?

From the foregoing, it is clear that we can address and hence answer this question in different ways. The answer that predominates, to this day, under the influence of positivist science and Darwinian evolutionary theory is ‘as self-centred objects’. This is the answer that comes from our rationalistic predilection to impose definitive limits between subjects and objects as independent figures of ‘one thing or another’, regardless of the common ground of receptive space that both include and are included by as dynamic flow-forms. It is the answer that comes from dividing nature between ‘one’ as a ‘whole’ and ‘many’ as ‘parts’, and so sees life as a competition or ‘power struggle’ for ‘superiority’ over ‘others’. But deep in the heart of this division lies profound inconsistency and paradox, rooted most fundamentally in the groundless supposition that material ‘form’ can be isolated from the immaterial ‘space’ that gives it size and shape. With this supposition comes an attitude of mind predisposed to conflict by making an enemy of ‘other’, out of the context of the limitless openness that pools all dynamically together as flow-form. And so it can be that fungi become represented either as ‘foes’, against trees, or as ‘friends’, with trees in their relentless struggle for life regardless of circumstances. At best, this representation is simplistic – the product of a crude mental removal of what is vital to life, which sacrifices ‘truth’ for the sake of ‘convenience’. At worst it leads to abusive mismanagement and damage.

The answer seldom heard – as yet – comes from what has been called the inclusional understanding of natural energy flow as the dynamic inclusion of infinite receptive space in local form and local form in infinite space. According to this understanding, trees and fungi relate as natural neighbourhoods, with each as a dynamic inclusion of the other’s influence. This understanding transforms the competitive representation of evolutionary processes on the basis of selective advantage, into a co-creative flow of all through all in receptive spatial context – what has been called natural inclusion.

This notion 'to clean the city by reintroducing nature' is essentially similar to re-understanding the Fungi's relationship to the Tree. The relationship is mutually beneficial but in some cases parasitic. The Fungi is key to tieing the project - its biological make -up and structure, its metaphorical lessons, symbiotic connections and uses through fementation in yeast and convergence of contaminated elements pulls all areas together.

Trees as Host Space For Fungi: Embodied Water Flows From Roots to Branch and Back

“A tree is a solar powered fountain, its sprays supplied through wood-lined conduits and sealed in by bark until their final outburst in leaves…Within and upon its branching, enfolding, water-containing surfaces, and reaching out from there into air and soil are branching, enfolding, water-containing surfaces of finer scale, the mycelial networks of fungi…which provide a communications interface for energy transfer from neighbour to neighbour, from living to dead, and from dead to living” – Alan Rayner, Presidential Address, British Mycological Society, December 1998

Underground Connections – Sources of ‘Fellowship’ and ‘Parental Care’

It has only been appreciated relatively recently that the mycelium of mycorrhizal fungi that links roots to soil can also form communication channels between roots of one plant and another plant, bringing scope for flow between them. Depending on the relative specificity of association between fungus and plant, the resulting connections can join plants of the same species or different species, and younger plants with older plants in a common underground network that sustains each in communion with the other as sources and sinks. So, what appear to be separate entities above ground are joined together below ground, in much the same way that what appear to be ‘islands’ above sea level may only be the peaks of a submerged mountain range.

I like the idea, Fungi are connectors, like the Finnish Institute they network between different plants and organisms to create benefitial relationships. Similarly the internet or 'web' reminds me of this Fungi underground network - a digital Fungal network - not seen but understood and results in connection.

Alan Rayner gives a lecture backing up the content above, about how the relationships between Fungi and Trees could help influence our society in profound new ways: