“Over the course of its more than ten-thousand-year life-span," she proclaimed, "Białowieża Forest has offered shelter not only to Europe's sole surviving megafauna and the royals who legislated its exclusive use, but also to boreal owls, dwarf marsh violets, black storks, gray wolves, snakes (as we have witnessed), the world's only population of Agrilus pseudocyaneus, around two hundred types of moss, two hundred eighty-three kinds of lichens, and over eighteen hundred fungal species, of which nine hundred forty-three are classified as being at risk. Of which two hundred can be found nowhere else in Poland. I am saying that there are two hundred different kinds of fungi here in Białowieża that are, everywhere else, probably already extinct.” ForestPolandFungiFlora And FaunaRare Species Book:The Extinction of Irena Rey Source: The Extinction of Irena Rey
“Had I taken my title from the kingdom of fungi, I would have opted not for some unspectacular parasite, but rather the reishi, or Amanita virosa, or maybe the magnificent split gill, a mushroom found on every continent except Antarctica, where lichens reign. (For more on this please see Irena Rey's Kernel of Light, in my translation.) This is the least this author could have done. For the split gill can be 23,328 different sexes, each of which is able to mate with any of the 23,327 that it is not.” FungiNumerousMushroomGenders Book:The Extinction of Irena Rey Source: The Extinction of Irena Rey