This autumn while visiting Tasmania’s Styx Valley I came across an unusual growth on a broken branch. It sort of looked like a lichen, but not quite. It didn’t really look like fungi either. I took a few shots, and checked in with the fine folk on the Tasmanian fungi group on facebook to discover it was in fact mycelium!

Mycelium – the conduit of the Wood Wide Web

Mycelium is tiny white, cottony threads that typically spread through the forest floor – or in this case a fallen branch – and produce the wonderful fungi that pop up in the forest every year. It has been nick-named the “wood wide web” as it has been shown that mycelium also links trees to each other through their roots, and even supplies nutrients and energy, keeping the forest healthy.

Fungi (mushrooms) are the fruiting body of this mycelium. In my experience, the mycelium is less commonly seen. This is the first autumn I’ve actually seen it. Although, as often is the case, when you see something once, you start to see it a lot more. Following this discovery in the Styx, I was spotting mycelium everywhere I looked up at Corinna later in the autumn. I’ll be looking very closely for it each time I visit the forests in the months and years ahead 🙂

Where to find out more about fungi and mycelium

In the past couple of years I’ve read a few books on the idea including The Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard and Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake. I also had the pleasure of seeing Alison Pouliot discuss her love of fungi at the Mushroom Festival in Hobart this autumn and even had a stall of my own photography there too which was fun 🙂

You could also re-watch the Avatar movies as Pandoras planetary network was very much inspired by the earths own network of mycelium.

And last but not least, you’d be very welcome to join one of my photography tours. Particularly in autumn, fungi becomes a pretty central focus of our attention!