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Fungus Quotes

Browse 12 quotes about Fungus.

Fungus Quotes

“A good upbringing is necessary for a long life, but sometimes the patience of the young trees is sorely tested. As I mentioned in chapter 5, "Tree Lottery," acorns and beechnuts fall at the feet of large "mother trees." Dr. Suzanne Simard, who helped discover maternal instincts in trees, describes mother trees as dominant trees widely linked to other trees in the forest through their fungal-root connections. These trees pass their legacy on to the next generation and exert their influence in the upbringing of the youngsters. "My" small beech trees, which have by now been waiting for at least eighty years, are standing under mother trees that are about two hundred years old -- the equivalent of forty-year-olds in human terms. The stunted trees can probably expect another two hundred years of twiddling their thumbs before it is finally their turn. The wait time is, however, made bearable. Their mothers are in contact with them through their root systems, and they pass along sugar and other nutrients. You might even say they are nursing their babies.”

TimeConnectionMothersTreesNursingFungiFungus
Book:The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate: Discoveries from a Secret World
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“The second or third time I watched Stamets show a video of a Cordyceps doing its diabolical thing to an ant—commandeering its body, making it do its bidding, and then exploding a mushroom from its brain in order to disseminate its genes—it occurred to me that Stamets and that poor ant had rather a lot in common. Fungi haven’t killed him, it’s true, and he probably knows enough about their wiles to head off that fate. But it’s also true that this man’s life—his brain!—has been utterly taken over by fungi; he has dedicated himself to their cause, speaking for the mushrooms in the same way that Dr. Seuss’s Lorax speaks for the trees. He disseminates fungal spores far and wide, helping them, whether by mail order or sheer dint of his enthusiasm, to vastly expand their range and spread their message.”

ScienceBrainAntsFungusCordycepsStamets
Book:How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics
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“A tree’s most important means of staying connected to other trees is a “wood wide web” of soil fungi that connects vegetation in an intimate network that allows the sharing of an enormous amount of information and goods.”

CommunicationSoilTreesFungiFungus
Book:The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate: Discoveries from a Secret World
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“Anthropomorphism is usually thought of as an illusion that arises like a blister in soft human minds: untrained, undisciplined, unhardened. There are good reasons for this: when we humanise the world, we may prevent ourselves from understanding the lives of other organisms on their own terms. But are there things this stance might lead us to pass over – or forget to notice?”

FungiAnthropocentrismAnthropomorphismFungusMycology
Book:Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures
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“The first one is stewed hard clam. You stew the hard clam in soy sauce until it's rather salty... ... and then you place it inside the rice ball... ... and wrap it with dried seaweed." "Huh, stewed hard clam?" "Stewed hard clam is what you eat in sushi, right? Why's that the future?" "Next is a matsutake rice ball. You cook the matsutake you picked during the season and simmer it until it's salty... ... then preserve it. That becomes the filling for the rice ball." "The scent and flavor... it brings back the joy of being Japanese." "It's good... but why is this the rice ball of the future?" "The last one is a katsuobushi rice ball. You shave a katsuobushi from makurazaki as thinly as possible... ...then you flavor it with soy sauce... ... and place it into the rice ball. Finally, wrap it in dried seaweed.”

FutureMushroomsClamsJapanese CookingFungusRice BallsBonito
Book:The Joy of Rice
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