Fabulous Fungi

Woodland Conservation News • Autumn 2015 FABULOUS FUNGI DEATH LIVING SEARCHING TO PICK BRINGS LIFE TOGETHER IN FOR OUR OR NOT TO TO WOODS HARMONY LOST FUNGI PICK? Wood Wise • Woodland Conservation News • Autumn 2015 1 3 CONTENTS 5 7 10 14 20 NORTHEASTWILDLIFE CO UK NORTHEASTWILDLIFE Coral spot, Nectria cinnabarina 3 The wonders of fungi 10 The bad and the ugly The wonders of fungi 5 Decomposers fuelling life 14 The Lost and Found Fungi Project The importance of fungi in woodland has There is a parallel with the woodland A tale of two communities Foraging: substainability and 7 20 previously been compared to the networks ecosystem. Many people appreciate, impact of pipes and cables that support a bustling understand and fight for the protection of city.1 As with man-made electricity and water endearing red squirrels or magnificent ancient infrastructure, fungi are the underground trees. But fewer look deeper into the soil, conduits that link and support woodland life to those species that may be more cryptic Editor: Kay Haw (Woodland Trust) – but they are also the ever-active workmen and less charming but make the cycle of life that seek out new tasks and opportunities. possible. Contributors: Martin Allison (British Mycological Society), Emma Bonham (Woodland Trust), Dr Brian Douglas (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew), Helen Jones (Woodland Trust), Stuart Skeates Many of us take our human support History and significance mechanisms for granted and do not fully Over centuries, fungi have been used and (British Mycological Society), Ray Woods (Independent Expert) understand their complexity or importance until revered by various human cultures for they cease to function. We often pay too much medicinal and culinary purposes, to drive Designer: Simon Hitchcock (Woodland Trust) attention to the outcome (e.g. a computer) than away evil spirits, for ritual purification, to the various support systems that allow it to and a variety of other functions and Cover photo: Chicken of the Woods, Laetiporus sulphureus by Shizhao.FlickrLick function (e.g. an electricity supply). ceremony. Unfortunately they have also been 2 Wood Wise • Woodland Conservation News • Autumn 2015 Wood Wise • Woodland Conservation News • Autumn 2015 3 misunderstood, with some believing them to be areas of greatest significance for woodland the work of evil spirits or witches, or growths of ecosystems – positive and negative. the earth. Delve into their world and fungi are in fact so special they are now classed in their own kingdom of life on earth. Of the estimated 1 Raynor, A. D. M. (1993) The fundamental importance of 0.8 - 5.1 million species of fungi in the world, fungi in woodlands. British Wildlife, 4: 205-215 over 70,000 species have been identified; living on land, in the air and water, even on and in plants and animals. Many are extremely beneficial, to us and other species, and a number have significant economic benefits. But others are harmful and act as pathogens which cause disease and even death. Evolutionary importance Plants and fungi may now be separated into COMMONS WIKIMEDIA HILLE ROB Hyphal network their own kingdoms, but they were once COMMONS WIKIMEDIA GLLAWM clumped together. This may be wrong in biological terms, but less so in evolutionary ones. As life moved from the Earth’s water to Decomposers fuelling life colonise the land over 400 million years ago, plants and fungi worked and evolved together to by Kay Haw achieve this. Death may not be a happy thought, but they around Chernobyl.1 A 40 per cent reduction Plants likely evolved from simple green algae, say ‘there is no life without death’ – and it in litter mass loss was shown in those areas but it was fungi that provided the root systems. seems without certain life forms, there is no where the death of soil microorganisms The plants utilised sunlight and carbon dioxide more life. from radiation poisoning was greatest. This in the air through photosynthesis, while decrease in decomposition reduces nutrient the fungi broke down the rock to access its Imagine a world without decomposition, where recycling and affects plant growth. nutrients. Evidence to support this is shown by finite resources were used just once and dead the earliest plant fossils having mycorrhizae. organisms had merely piled up across the Deathly white fingers Would plants have become as dominant and globe millennia ago. Evolution would likely Pick up an old, rotting branch in a wood and terraformed the planet to eventually allow us to have worked itself into a dead-end on such a working their way in from the soil are pale evolve without this vital partnership? planet. Thankfully, our Earth evolved fungi, fronds and filaments; patterns of great beauty bacteria and other decomposers to recycle and strength. These are the real body of a Fabulous fruits nutrient molecules from dead bodies back into saproxylic fungus, the hyphal networks that For the majority of their lives fungi exist as the system for use by the next generation of impregnate the earth and search out the dead filamentous networks in virtual anonymity, species, and so their lives support the life and for repurposing. Fungal hyphae decompose by beneath or within structures. But it is their evolution of everything else. means of a two-pronged attack strategy. fruiting bodies, the toadstools or mushrooms, which appear to herald their existence and Chernobyl is a useful place to witness the Without chlorophyll to photosynthesise or reproduce through the development and effects of losing decomposers. On 26 April mouths to eat, fungi use extracellular enzymes release of spores. For some fruiting bodies the 1986, a deadly explosion at the nuclear to dissolve plant and animal material. They conditions of autumn encourage their growth, power plant blew radioactive particles into are heterotrophic so absorb the nutrients for others it is spring, and some are found year- the atmosphere that rained back down into they have externally broken down from other round, but not all appear each year and the the soil. In September 2007, a research team organisms. Their hyphae secrete the acids and rarest are often difficult to record. Yellow brain fungus, placed 572 bags of uncontaminated dry leaf enzymes that enable this and then absorb the litter from four tree species into 20 forest sites The following fungi articles focus on those Tremella mesenterica resulting nutrients. 4 Wood Wise • Woodland Conservation News • Autumn 2015 Wood Wise • Woodland Conservation News • Autumn 2015 5 molecule) and is only exceeded in abundance on Earth by cellulose. It too is vital in providing A tale of two communities strength and longevity to plant cells, as it is by Ray Woods tough to rot, especially wood and bark. A tree’s ability to reach a hundred or thousand (and some many more) years of age is enabled Woodland is so much more than just a Creating new woods by the tough, durable properties of cellulose collection of trees. Let us look at the infrastructure requirements of and lignin. So it makes sense that it would a tree and the challenge we are presenting new take special organisms with super powers To imagine that you could create a town by trees within their new home. They have been well to break them down over time. The large just sticking a few houses in the ground seems looked after from the nursery bed and you have molecules (macromolecules) of cellulose and dangerously naive. Its inhabitants would soon carefully planted and perhaps watered them. lignin are broken down by the fungi into smaller find life intolerable with no water, power or But where were the trees from? If the Woodland Sulphur tuft, Hypholoma fasciculare, molecules, which can be taken up and used by communications with the rest of the world. Trust supplied them recently we can be assured NORTHEASTWILDLIFE wood rotting fungus themselves and others. Getting the right sort of house is also critical. they were grown in the UK from UK seeds. A mud-walled house might work well in sub- However, the hyphae not only release secretions Food for all Saharan Africa but fail totally in the moist However, many nurseries still import trees from to break materials down, they are also Decomposition activity not only benefits the climate of Manchester. as far away as Eastern Europe and the seed may fungi themselves, it also increases the nutrients extremely powerful. Hyphae grow continuously have come from further afield. Where you come available to other species. Following the from their tips, termed apical growth as they Human settlements are not unlike woods. Yet from may not seem to be too important. But if breakdown of organic matter by fungal hyphae, grow from the apex, and extension can be rapid we still expect to create woodland by planting you are a silver birch adapted to come into leaf in - up to 40 micrometres per minute. The sheer the resulting small, nutrient-rich molecules trees, which might come from somewhere can be taken up by the roots of plants as well. spring once a certain day length is reached and force of this growth exerts extreme pressure miles away, in whatever bit of ground happens Plant roots and fungal hyphae coalesce happily you have been moved a long way south of your on the material into which they are growing. to be available, and trust that the essential together in woodland soils, benefiting them both provenance, your measure of when spring has It is the combination of this and their secreted infrastructure will somehow appear. enzymes that enable them to penetrate and and others. arrived is far too early and you will be tempted break down some of the toughest natural into leaf before the frosts have gone.

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