Richard Fortey shares two of my particular passions, geology and fungi, however he does so at a level I can only dream about. He also manages to write about these often bewildering subjects in a way that both delights, informs and entertains. This whirlwind tour of fungi is no exception and his knowledge and passion for the subject is evident
from first page to last. Fungi and their role in what has become known as the Wood Wide Web has become a topic of a number of books and articles recently.

It’s easy to get swept up in the idea that trees in a
forest can communicate with one another using fungal mycelium as their superhighway. It is certainly true, as Fortey shows, that many fungi do have a symbiotic relationship with trees. However, he believes that the evidence for the communication network some suggest is as yet unproven. While some of us were struggling with making sourdough bread, Fortey’s lock down project was examining the growth of fungi on the dung of deer and rabbits, resulting in a chapter called “Dung Stories.”

By the end of the book, you will be bewildered by how varied, complex and sometimes completely bonkers the fungal kingdom is and how little we still understand it.