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Fungi sprout in a fertile mind
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YOUR COLLEGE YOUR FUTURE 22 March 2, 2010 The Byron Shire Echo
Story & photo Mary Gardner
A silent creature that has no need for a skin surfaces in my garden. After the recent heavy rain, it rests the ground from the old tree stump to the fence, about a metre. I look down on a set of white puffy discs, each the size of my hand. But close up, the surface is a crowd of stiff frilly tubes tightly packed together. It’s a fungus. Moving through the soil, focusing on the tree stump and dead roots, the fungus is more animal than plant. Like any animal, it eats other dead organisms. But instead of swallowing and digesting its food in a stomach, it oozes digestive enzymes around itself and into its meal. Then it absorbs what it likes of the predigested nutrients and leaves the rest. Unlike animals, it doesn’t have to process any waste. A fungus seems like a sometime thing. That’s only because for much of its life, it exists as an underground growth. It’s a mass of threads called hyphae: cells that divide over and over again but do not separate. Like plants, the cells have walls providing structural support. Unlike plants, the cell walls are made of chitin. That’s the same material used by insects and other jointed leg creatures like crabs and shrimp. Every hyphae is also a pipeline of nutrition. Drawing on adequate food and moisture upstream, the tips can grow very quickly. They can suddenly change their body shape, going from micro to macro overnight. What they develop – the familiar mushroom or these unique discs of tubes – are ‘reproductive bodies’. What an awkward phrase! Acting on some cue, the fungus changes, creating a fleshy launching pad. From here, spores burst out, into the wind or onto the legs of some insect. There are small flies crawling all over. When the spores land, preferably on a tasty dead thing, the fungus may grow anew. Depending on the process the fungus used to create the spores,
the new growths may be clones. These are genetically identical to their origins. Fern plants do something vaguely like this. Or, if the spores are the result of a mating between two different fungi, the new growth is an offspring of the parents. This is something like sex and babies, as we, along with other animals, know it. But the ‘mating’ is between ‘types’: one naked nucleus simply fuses with another unlike it. This happens somewhere in the hyphae. No sperm and eggs are involved. A variety of ‘parents’ donate nuclei at different times, which are saved until the right moment. There is no hurry. Now, at halfway with the writing of this, I step out to visit the fungus creature. I don’t know its name. Only since 1959 has science made a separate kingdom of fungi. That’s when Robert Whittaker insisted on grouping together all these external digesters whose bodies change from threads to launch pads to spores and back again. There’s a lot more work to do sorting out which species is which. The bodies are so variable, even within a species. I get moody. I wonder if the article so far is evocative enough to startle readers. Will they look twice now at a wild
fungus? Will they want to know more? I remember being startled when I first read about Tolkien’s Ents, the ancient tree-like shepherds of the forest. Could there be lively, intelligent but utterly mysterious qualities to my favourite old willow tree? Years of labs, field work and incessant reading have built on my first fanciful glimpse of Ents. I learned to respect data, whatever observations or numbers or results. To know how not to go beyond the facts is an important restraint on the imagination. But by staying very close to the material world, imagination carries awareness into it. This is the match lit in a cave. The scent the bee or ant carries back to the hive or colony. The feel of the sea between each silver butterfly fish in the school of hundreds. Being human, we use our hands and create art. We use our voices and tell stories. Bit by bit, the art and literature of science grows. Such books by Lewis Thomas, David Suzuki and Rachel Carson are widely loved for their beauty as well as their impact. Last year, Richard Dawkins published an anthology of outstanding writings by scientists. Last month, the New Yorker published an extract from E O
Wilson’s new novel. As might be expected from a renowned specialist of ants, the story is of a boy fascinated with ant colonies. The MIT science journalism reviewer Paul Raeburn describes the book as ‘science fictive’. California’s Education Department runs a website cataloguing quality science writing for students from kindergarden through high school. The Australian Science Communicators is now compiling a list of recent works by science writers based in Australia. The British Society for Literature and Science at Cambridge University reviews fiction as well as nonfiction works. There are inspiring readings for everyone. Behind every splash of words, every drawing or photo, there is craftsmanship. That these works also have a contagious imagination and awareness – I end up reaching for the word in another language. The old Chinese poetpainters called this conjuring quality shiyi. After another night of rain, parts of my fungus are brown, dissolving into jelly. Even as it digests dead tree roots, something else is eating away at it. There are more flies. Perhaps some spores have been launched just in time. Maybe some stick to the legs of flies and travel far away.
A nostalgic look back at a 70s childhood Goodbye Crackernight is a comic memoir of growing up in 1970s Australia by Alstonville resident Justin Sheedy. Justin will be signing copies of his new book and speaking in-store at Mary Ryan’s Books, Byron Bay, on Friday March 19 and Saturday 20 from 10am. According to the publicity, ‘Goodbye Crackernight is the story of one boy’s childhood in 1970s Australia, back when a child’s proudest possession was not a Playstation, but a secondhand bike. ‘It is a story of fireworks, of
fun that cost nothing, UFOcrowded skies, streakers, limegreen Valiants, half-sucked Sunny Boys and electric-pink hotpants. ‘It is a story of growing up and innocence left behind – at a three-day pool party. It is the tale of an era, of far simpler times, of an annual neighbourhood festival and an Australia now long gone. ‘Justin Sheedy was born in 1968 and grew up in North Epping in Sydney’s north-west suburbs. ‘He was educated by the Lit-
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tle Sisters of No Mercy, then by the Jesuits, and obtained a degree in fine arts, qualifying him to drive a cab. He has worked in radio, for a while as a go-go dancer as well as for the Australian Public Service though has since made a full recovery. ‘If you have ever worked in the public service, you will understand. If you still do work in the public service, Justin remembers you, so you better have been nice to him as he’s writing books now. ‘His inspiration to write this
book was the across-the-board and instant enthusiasm he received from anybody of his generation to whom he ever mentioned “Crackernight” or any of the minutiae that formed childhood in 1970s Australia: the firecrackers, the TV shows, the crazes, the toys, the lollies, the games, the clothes, the parents, the hideous 70s colour schemes…’ Goodbye Crackernight, published by Sid Harta Publishing, is currently available through all good bookstores and online at http://sidharta.com. www.echo.net.au