Excerpts: Entangled Life: How fungi make our world, change our minds and shape our future.

The books quoted in this section relate to Regenerative Agriculture. Excerpts are presented to give you a feel for the message contained within:

Extract from Merlin Sheldrake’s book Entangled Life: How fungi make our world, change our minds and shape our future.

Page 142:

In their relationship, plants and mycorrhizal fungi enact a polarity: plants shoots engage with the light and air, while the fungi and plant roots engage with the solid ground. Plants pack up light and carbon dioxide into sugars and lipids. Mycorrhizal fungi unpack nutrients bound up in rock and decomposing material. These are fungi with a dual niche: part of their life within the plant, part in the soil. They are stationed at the entry point of carbon into terrestrial life cycles and stich the atmosphere into relations with the ground. To this day, mycorrhizal fungi help plants cope with drought, heat and many others stresses life on land has presented from the very beginning, as do symbiotic fungi that crowd into plants leaves and stems.

Page 147:

Mycorrhizal fungi can provide up to 80% of a plant’s nitrogen, and as much as 100% of its phosphorus. Fungi supply other crucial nutrients to plants, such as zinc and copper. They also provide plants with water, and help them to survive drought.  In return, plants allocate up to 30% of the carbon they harvest to their mycorrhizal partners.

What has no brain, no sense of sight or smell, but can solve mazes, learn patterns, keep time, and pass down the wisdom of generations.

Yes, it is slime mould.