Francesca Gavin
1
Mushrooms can be utilised to clean polluted water and oil spills, make bio-fuel, re-green desert regions and even eat plastic.
2
Scientists are exploring the potential of being able to transmit electrical impulses through the fungal network.
3
The prized Matsutake mushroom only grows in places that are changed in the wake of industrialisation.
4
Mushrooms have hundreds of ‘sexes’ and reproduce by fusing together.
5
There are 200 species of psilocybin mushroom.
6
Without fungi all ecosystems would fail.
7
There are an estimated 2.2 to 3.8 million species of fungi.
8
Animals and mushrooms share a common single cell ancestor.
9
It was fungi that allowed plants to colonise the earth by breaking down the Earth’s bedrock.
10
The largest organism on earth is armillaria ostoyae fungus, covering 2,385 acres and is at least 2,400 years old.