FUNGI AS COLLABORATORS
If you have stepped foot in a New Zealand bookshop this winter, you would be hard-pressed to have not been presented with the fabulous book Fungi of Aotearoa : A Curious Forager’s Field Guide by Liv Sisson (Penguin).
As a fan of Liv and curious about the kingdom, I bought a copy for my sister and immediately regretted not having my own on hand while trying to identify the outrageously aggressive fungi that was ploughing up through our ASHPHALT driveway!
It’s a pleasure to share an extract from this book, opening the door on Liv’s infectious passion and friendly voice. Within the pages examines what fungi actually is, their place and their purpose in the natural world. There are also extensive profiles on New Zealand specimens to help you both identify AND understand what might be naughty and what might be nice! I highly recommend it to any interested plants person!
Below is an extract exploring the idea of fungi as collaborators for a healthy garden and acting as a signal system for our climate, combined with some fabulous photography by Paula Vigus.
Liv Sisson
FUNGI ARE OUR COLLABORATORS
In kōrero with Joe McLeod of Ngāi Tūhoe, I learned about the purple, blue, yellow, orange, white, black, green, even translucent fungi he finds on the ngāhere (forest) floor in his home, Te Urewera. He keeps an eye on the moss and lichen there, too. All are indicators of air clarity, water purity and weather patterns. Joe sees fungi as a telekinetic liquid system that links to the underworld; a legacy of Papatūānuku, who uses it to communicate with plant matter worldwide. Joe taught me that Māori have always been aware of the unique importance of fungi to the stability of our flora and fauna, our food system, and their spiritual connectivity to each other. When out in the bush, he is constantly looking at the whole system as opposed to one small piece.
Along with intensive agriculture and land development, climate change is also putting pressure on our food system, testing the strength of the network. In the bush, the mushrooms that Joe forages seem bigger and puffier than they used to; this could be their response to warmer temperatures and higher humidity. Now what if we looked at our food system as just that, a system? My garden invited me to. When my corn crop didn’t grow as well as I expected it would, I wanted to know why. I’d had great success with it for two years in the same spot. So off to the library I went . . .
I found several answers in Te Mahi Oneone Hua Parakore: A Māori Soil Sovereignty and Wellbeing Handbook. Corn, I learned, requires nutrient-rich soil, soil that is very much alive. And after the corn is harvested, the soil and the micro-fungi within it need time to replenish themselves. I also learned that in te ao Māori, soil is a taonga; it is the sacred treasure at the foundation of our interconnected world. Everything is seen as part of an interwoven family — animals, fungi, birds, insects, people, soils, the sun. The term ‘tangata whenua’ — people of the land — reflects this.
This showed me that I wasn’t the masterful manager of the garden I thought I was — instead, I was a wishful co-producer, working alongside corn, alongside the soil and the micro-fungi within it. With this in mind, the fact that I’d repeatedly planted corn in the same spot felt silly-as. It was time for a crop rotation; time to enjoy the memory of last year’s corn, and plant beans in her place. Beans are nitrogen fixers — they capture nitrogen from the air and draw it down into the soil. This replenishes our fungal friends after the hard work of bringing a corn crop to life is done.
With this collaborative approach — a balance of giving and taking — the path towards a resilient food system feels more straightforward. It may not be forward, in fact, but back — back to a way of raising food in a way that doesn’t forget about our key collaborators. And fungi may help show us the way. There’s a lot of hope in our soils and fungi.
The more we consider them, the more we might learn about how to do things just a little bit differently.
The complete introduction to finding, identifying and using mushrooms and other fungi in New Zealand