#581: Natural History Reading List:#27 Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures

I have this book as an Audible copy, and it is excellent. 

It is also available to purchase in paperback and hardback, or loan from your local library.

If you haven't already got a copy then it may be worth going for the illustrated version which has some wonderful images of fungi.

A film of the book has also been made, with narration by Björk.

#474: Hyphae and other fungal vocabulary

Merlin Sheldrake's book 'An Entangled Life' explores the world of fungi, and provides some very useful additional information on key words linked to this organism.

A hypha (from Ancient Greek ὑφή (huphḗ) 'web'; pl.: hyphae) is a long, branching, filamentous structure of a fungus, oomycete, or actinobacterium.

In most fungi, hyphae are the main mode of vegetative growth, and are collectively called a mycelium.

These run beneath the ground, and fungi are the fruiting bodies.

A reminder that developing new vocabulary will be part of any new GCSE... what vocabulary makes the list remains to be seen.

Image: Alan Parkinson - shared on Flickr under CC license

#397: Fungi: the Web of Life

This is an essential watch. BBC4 is showing Merlin Sheldrake' film on the importance of Fungi. 

It will be on iPlayer shortly after being broadcast. It remains to be seen how long it stays there. The film is narrated by Bjork.

Update

Available for a year at least on iPlayer.

#247: Fungi: Entangled Life

Merlin Sheldrake's book is an important one, and I will be exploring it for the reading list. 

I will write a full review in due course and add it to the library as well once I get the chance to finish listening to it - which I will do during March.

I have an Audible copy of the book to explore and potentially use with students. The introduction to the book is an excellent start and nice introduction to the value of fungi in our lives. There is also plenty on how humans have used fungi for a range of applications from industrial to medical to recreational.

One of my favourite sequences from the upcoming IMAX movie, Fungi: Web of Life. Björk explains how a fungal spore becomes a mycelial network. The astonishing footage is by Wim van Egmond. I'll post a series of clips from the film in the coming days. Stay tuned! pic.twitter.com/TnAjjqFfQK

— Merlin Sheldrake (@MerlinSheldrake) October 23, 2023

“Entangled Life is a dazzling, vibrant, vision-changing book. Sentence after sentence stopped me short. I ended it wonderstruck at the fungal world and the earth-shaking, hierarchy-breaking implications of Sheldrake's argument. This is a remarkable work by a remarkable writer, which succeeds in springing life into strangeness again.” — Robert Macfarlane

A film has been made suitable for IMAX, so I will look out for a screening of that as well.