mycelium delirium

"Mushrooms...are merely the surface features - the strange fruit - of much larger organisms known as mycelia. Their mazy tendrils creep beneath the forest floor, over rocks and roots, under bark and leaf litter, through rotting logs and decaying bones, digesting the dead and sustaining the living."

Mmmmm.

There has been rain every day, nearly all day, for the last few days. Everything is damp and fetid, and these little mushroom forests are popping up overnight.

Mushrooms can really fascinate and disgust me. This patch appeared on a very neglected square of parkway where a massive box elder grew for at least 80 years. It fell over two years ago, pretty spectacularly, and left a huge mound of mulch in the middle of which the city planted a tiny maple.

It's growing quickly, and so are the weeds and these mushrooms.


I usually try to avoid the area.





Last night I read this article about mushroom hunters in the New Yorker with all sorts of crazy mushroom facts.
For instance:

1. The world's largest organism is a mycelium in Oregon. It covers 2000 acres and is more than 8000 years old.
2. Apparently, mushrooms can grow in one's body.

The world is a wondrous place, but maybe some things are better left alone. Like mushrooms.