Many people in the UK view mushrooms and toadstools with suspicion. But there is growing evidence that fungi provide materials and medicines, destroy pollutants and improve our soils – which means our mycophobia is misplaced, argues Michael Green

“That’s not a friendly mushroom,” warn the comments on a friend’s Facebook feed. Over on LinkedIn, a photo of an innocent red and white amanita muscaria fungus provokes fear and loathing across the globe: “Super poison,” writes a journalist from Switzerland. A user in Arizona declares it to be a “Covid mushroom”.

But the outrage isn’t just online. Mushrooms are attacked in real life too. There are websites dedicated to helping gardeners to eradicate unwanted mushrooms from their lawns and it’s not uncommon in Britain to find fungi kicked over or stamped on for, presumably for fear they poison humans or dogs.

These are symptoms of what mycophiles – mushroom lovers – call mycophobia, an irrational fear of fungi or, more specifically, mushrooms, the reproductive organs of fungi.

Pic: Amanita Muscaria

So what lies behind this fear of fungi?

Mushrooms are mysterious. Since the dawn of time, they have fascinated us and captured our imagination like no other organisms. Perceived as life-giving, mind-altering and deadly, mushrooms simultaneously inspire wonder, fear and confusion.

Humans like to put stuff into categories, so perhaps the difficulty we have had classifying fungi – considered a type of plant until the mid-20^th century – tells us something about our ambivalent relationship with them.

Mycologist Giuliana Furci moved from north London’s Camden Town to Chile, where she founded Fungi Foundation, a global NGO that conserves and promotes fungi. “Mycophobia is a term that’s too big,” she says. “In countries like Chile or the UK, there isn’t an absolute mycophobia. Everybody loves yeast – what would London be without its pubs and beer, or Chile without wine?

”Some people are afraid of mushrooms, but mushrooms are a small portion of the whole fungal kingdom, or queendom. There are some founded fears of these macroscopic manifestations of fungi, but there is a devout love for microscopic fungi, like yeast."

Urban fungi safaris

During the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, with travel and indoor entertainment off the menu, millions of us flocked outdoors to explore green spaces we may previously have ignored. Many of us discovered a new-found appreciation of wildlife, from trees and wildflowers, to birds and urban foxes.

However, fungi often remain overlooked. Many of us expect to find wild mushrooms only in forests. But fungi thrive in unexpected places, including big cities across the UK. Although their habitats may be fragmented or degraded, these resilient organisms are experts at finding urban niches to call home.

Mushrooms can be found growing wild in urban landscapes, from cracks in pavement slabs and car-park woodchip, to football pitches and housing-estate lawns and in neglected green spaces such as “scratty woods”, the favoured habitat of Ali McKernan, who documents his passion for discovering mushrooms in unlikely locales around Bury near Manchester on his YouTube channel, The FUNgi Guy.

Pic: Redlead Roundhead

Mycologist and writer Roger Phillips has recorded 50 species of fungi in his neighbourhood garden, a five-minute walk from one of central London’s busiest train stations.

Although you’re unlikely to find big-name species, chanterelles or parrot waxcaps that rely on mature ecosystems in urban landscapes, if you slow down and look closely, you’ll see that we share our urban centres with an abundance of fungal neighbours, from shaggy ink caps that decay in 24 hours, to perennial conks such as the artist’s bracket.

Mushroom hunting can be a way to practise mindfulness; becoming aware of what is around in the present moment. Many mycophiles find that, as well as providing an antidote for stressful urban lifestyles, connecting with fungi shifts their relationship with nature.

“Through fungi, I came to understand nature in a deeper way,” explains writer Eugenia Bone, author of Mycophilia and Fantastic Fungi. “Fungi was the window through which I accessed a more complex picture of biology. How things are interrelated. It was a spiritual experience.

“Fungi effect weather, weather effects plants, plants effect mammals, mammals effect bacteria… it’s more of a web.”

Changing the narrative

Fungi provide a living metaphor for the interconnectedness of life on earth. So during the summer 2020 lockdown, London Fungus Network launched to help city-dwellers get to know their fungal neighbours.

With support from the London National Park City initiative, the network brings people together for fungus forays to learn about common mushroom species, online talks and Open-Myc Nights that celebrate the humble fungus in art and culture.

Attitudes towards fungi do seem to be shifting. Barely a week seems to pass without mushrooms making headlines; from medical trials using psychedelic psilocybin compounds to treat mental health disorders, to Adidas’ prototype Mylo trainers manufactured from animal-free fungal leather.

Last year brought an exhibition dedicated to The art, design and future of fungi at London’s Somerset House gallery. Furloughed entrepreneurs launched mushroom micro-farms during lockdown. And Merlin Sheldrake’s book Entangled Life has spread spores of myco-curiosity to a wider public hungry to know more about these mysterious organisms.

Once the preserve of traditional medicine in Asia, powdered reishi and lion’s mane mushrooms have found their way into the western wellness industry, even artisan beverages and chocolates.

Mushrooms can be found growing wild in urban landscapes, from cracks in pavement slabs and car-park woodchip, to football pitches and housing-estate lawns and in neglected green spaces such as “scratty woods”, the favoured habitat of Ali McKernan, who documents his passion for discovering mushrooms in unlikely locales around Bury near Manchester on his YouTube channel, The FUNgi Guy.

Pic: Shaggy Inkcap

“Through fungi, I came to understand nature in a deeper way,” explains writer Eugenia Bone, author of Mycophilia and Fantastic Fungi. “Fungi was the window through which I accessed a more complex picture of biology. How things are interrelated. It was a spiritual experience.

“Fungi effect weather, weather effects plants, plants effect mammals, mammals effect bacteria… it’s more of a web.”

Changing the narrative

Fungi provide a living metaphor for the interconnectedness of life on earth. So during the summer 2020 lockdown, London Fungus Network launched to help city-dwellers get to know their fungal neighbours.

With support from the London National Park City initiative, the network brings people together for fungus forays to learn about common mushroom species, online talks and Open-Myc Nights that celebrate the humble fungus in art and culture.

Attitudes towards fungi do seem to be shifting. Barely a week seems to pass without mushrooms making headlines; from medical trials using psychedelic psilocybin compounds to treat mental health disorders, to Adidas’ prototype Mylo trainers manufactured from animal-free fungal leather.

Last year brought an exhibition dedicated to The art, design and future of fungi at London’s Somerset House gallery. Furloughed entrepreneurs launched mushroom micro-farms during lockdown. And Merlin Sheldrake’s book Entangled Life has spread spores of myco-curiosity to a wider public hungry to know more about these mysterious organisms.

Once the preserve of traditional medicine in Asia, powdered reishi and lion’s mane mushrooms have found their way into the western wellness industry, even artisan beverages and chocolates.

We are starting to see the narrative change from fear of fungi to fascination.

“There’s much more to this group of organisms than mushrooms,” Furci says. ”There are so many examples of fantastic interactions with humans, from the history of tweed and dyeing wool, to beverages, materials, or Stradivarius violins… [that] choose wood stained by a fungus to give that special sound. So there’s enough to convert people from mushroom-phobia to mushroom-philia.”

Back to nature

One little-tapped application for fungi is rewilding; restoring ecosystems through reintroducing natural processes or missing species. “There’s a huge gap in using fungi for applied ecology and restoration,“ says conservationist and founder of Rewilding Mycology David Satori. “Fungi can accelerate and increase these projects’ success.”

More than 80 per cent of plant species have symbiotic relationships with mycorrhizal fungi; ectomycorrhizae species that externally colonise plant roots or arbuscular mycorrhizae that directly penetrate the root cells, exchanging nutrients and water and creating resilience to pathogens or stresses like drought.

Pic: Dryad's Saddle

When human activity disturbs the soil, the mycorrhizal fungal network becomes degraded. Ali Quoreshi of the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research argues that reinstalling these fungal-root networks is “essential” for habitat restoration.

Agriculture has used arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi for decades but we are still only learning how to apply fungi to restore disturbed landscapes, particularly with ectomycorrhizae. We need to know more about how plant-fungi-soil-climate interact in nature.

“A lot of places we are trying to rewild are different ecosystems to what we want them to be, like converting agricultural land to woodland,” says Satori. “You can’t plop a tree in the ground and expect it to grow.

“Trees need a healthy microbiomes to thrive, so we should get as good at growing fungi as we are at growing trees. Fungi and trees can’t grow without each other, they are like one superorganism.”

Michael Green is founder of London Fungus Network, a volunteer ranger with London National Park City and an environmental consultant. Follow @londonfungusnetwork or email londonfungusnetwork@hotmail.com