#funga

[flicorian]

October 10, 2012 [via]

[nature-is-a-gift]

Cool mushrooms I found 🍄‍🟫.

[naturalist-journal]

[okinawa4mois]

En direction de la cascade de Funga (2)

[plagiomnium]

Fungi eating fungi part 3

[vesper-tinus]

Chip Cherries (Leratiomyces ceres)

[rebeccathenaturalist]

When discussing flora and fauna, don’t forget ‘funga’

Conservation efforts often overlook fungi. That can change by using “mycologically inclusive language,” researchers say.

This cropped up a few months back and I still am not quite sure what to think of it. I don't remember enough of my high school Latin to be able to figure out why fauna and flora end with -a and fungi with -i. Fauna and flora are singular terms referring to a collection of animals or plants, respectively, but fungi has been doing double duty as both the collective singular (all the various fungus species in a given group) AND also the collective plural (here are three individual species of fungus referred to together.) I suppose the proposal is to give the fungus kingdom its own collective singular term ending in -a.

Which, from a linguistic perspective, makes sense. But I'm not sure how much it would resonate with the general public. People already use "fungi" in both manners, and I don't know whether trying to push "funga" as a new term is going to be effective in raising awareness of the need to include fungi in conservation efforts.

The thing is, fungi are still often erroneously considered to be in the plant kingdom by a lot of people (and it doesn't help that in culinary terms they're usually just categorized as a vegetable.) The whole idea that if you pull up a whole mushroom instead if cutting it means you'll "kill the whole fungus" is a prime example of how even foragers don't always understand the differences between a plant and a fungus, let alone grok that they're in different kingdoms entirely.

What I do agree with, though, is the need to not just ignore fungi when we're talking about conservation, habitat restoration, etc. Of the three kingdoms--animals, plants, and fungi--the fungi are the least-studied and least-understood when it comes to their roles in ecosystems and their conservation needs, to say nothing of the threat of extinction. The IUCN does have about 800 species listed with various statuses ranging from critically endangered to data deficient, but that's a drop in the bucket compared to just under 150,000 described species, and an estimated 2-4 million species total worldwide.

Until we know more specifics, both on fungal ecology and conservation statuses, we should assume that damage to an ecosystem--particularly common fungal substrates like soil and decaying wood--poses a real threat to the fungi that live there.

[kaiedwardsartblog]

"Caretaking at Comy: Outpost for the Mycelial Young." [Installation]

Ceramic & fungal sculptures by Kai Edwards