Mycologist Quotes

We don't scare easy. We're Mycologists." "Yes, Fungi makes you brave.

Fungi marched onto land more than a billion years ago. Many fungi partnered with plants, which largely lacked these digestive juices. Mycologists believe that this alliance allowed plants to inhabit land around 700 million years ago. Many millions of years later, one evolutionary branch of fungi led to the development of animals

Fungi are veteran survivors of ecological disruption. Their ability to cling on—and often flourish—through periods of catastrophic change is one of their defining characteristics. They are inventive, flexible, and collaborative. With much of life on Earth threatened by human activity, are there ways we can partner with fungi to help us adapt? These may sound like the delirious musings of someone buried up to their neck in decomposing wood chips, but a growing number of radical mycologists think exactly this. Many symbioses have formed in times of crisis. The algal partner in a lichen can’t make a living on bare rock without striking up a relationship with a fungus. Might it be that we can’t adjust to life on a damaged planet without cultivating new fungal relationships

There are old mycologists and there are bold mycologists, but there are no old, bold mycologists.

Are you saying that you believe in ghosts?” I raised my eyebrows. Despite my personal view on the existence of ghosts, I had expected Miss Potter to be far more skeptical. “But you’re a scientist.” “I am a mycologist, Lieutenant.” She tapped my shin with her umbrella. “My intimate knowledge of fungi does not translate to a knowledge of spiritualism or souls or life after death. I loathe people who assume that because they are an expert in one field, they are therefore infallible on a totally unrelated topic, merely because they gave it five minutes of thought.

Mushroomed: after a rain mushrooms appear on the surface of the earth as if from nowhere. Many do so from a sometimes vast underground fungus that remains invisible and largely unknown. What we call mushrooms mycologists call the fruiting body of a larger, less visible fungus. Uprisings and revolutions are often considered to be spontaneous, but less visible long-term organizing—or underground work—often laid the foundation.

Mushroom people are fond of saying, ‘There are old mycologists and there are bold mycologists, but there are no old, bold mycologists.’ 

psilocybin mushrooms “occur in abundance wherever mycologists abound.