Friday, April 24, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Intelligent Morels
This year it has become apparent to me that morels are an intelligent form of life. The way they adapt their coloration in one generation or less, their habit of sending up early "volunteer" fruiting bodies to sense the environment and signal the colony that it's optimal time to fruit, the odd telepathy-like thoughts I have just before finding a large group of morels - tell me these creatures think. That, and the fact that they evolved less than 80,000 years ago from a single celled yeast to their present form - a phenomenon observed in no other creature. Are they intelligently evolving themselves?
Several days ago I stood on a morel mycelium mat I gauged to be approximately 200 square foot in size. My mind drew a parallel between the electrochemical process that goes on in an animal nervous system and the hugely interconnected chemical communication process going on in one of these mycelium mats. It seemed intuitively obvious that these mushroom "colonies" are conducting the business of communicating with their environment including me. Was this just the ol' hippie new age bias clouding my thinking, or was intelligence in play?
Enter Paul Stamets, the godfather of medicinal mushrooms. In his article, "Fungal Intelligence and Bioremediation" Stamets states it more eloquently and scientifically than I could when he says, "I have come to believe that mycelial mats, found nearly everywhere underfoot in our planet's soil, form a network that is sentient, intelligent and responsive." A large mycelium mat contains more than enough chemical paths and receptors to effect a "brain." And if they are truly telepathic as I believe, they're potentially linked up globally and massively increasing that chemical brain-power.
Old 'shroom hunters seem to be a weird bunch and they often have a far-away look reminiscent of Electric Kool-Aid cybernauts. Or are we simply communing with a higher life form?
Several days ago I stood on a morel mycelium mat I gauged to be approximately 200 square foot in size. My mind drew a parallel between the electrochemical process that goes on in an animal nervous system and the hugely interconnected chemical communication process going on in one of these mycelium mats. It seemed intuitively obvious that these mushroom "colonies" are conducting the business of communicating with their environment including me. Was this just the ol' hippie new age bias clouding my thinking, or was intelligence in play?
Enter Paul Stamets, the godfather of medicinal mushrooms. In his article, "Fungal Intelligence and Bioremediation" Stamets states it more eloquently and scientifically than I could when he says, "I have come to believe that mycelial mats, found nearly everywhere underfoot in our planet's soil, form a network that is sentient, intelligent and responsive." A large mycelium mat contains more than enough chemical paths and receptors to effect a "brain." And if they are truly telepathic as I believe, they're potentially linked up globally and massively increasing that chemical brain-power.
Old 'shroom hunters seem to be a weird bunch and they often have a far-away look reminiscent of Electric Kool-Aid cybernauts. Or are we simply communing with a higher life form?
Morels 2009
The morels just keep coming! So far I've netted 200... all but one were common morels, blonde and meaty. The odd-one was a verpa bohemica.
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