THE MAGIC OF MUSHROOMS

Ciaran Sneddon takes you to a weird and wonderful world filled with superpowered lifeforms.

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What do you think of when you hear the word “mushroom”? Is it a frying pan of sizzling veg, a fairytale scene with a pixie sitting on top of a toadstool, an autumn scene of rotten logs, or even a Halloween witch's cauldron bubbling with a deadly potion?

The wonderful thing about mushrooms is that they are a bit of everything. They can be food, medicine or a poison; they can be something so small you'd never see it, or larger than a small town. In fact, the only thing you can really be sure about with these magical lifeforms is that they will surprise and baffle your expectations.

A magical kingdom

Mushrooms are one of several types of lifeform that fall into the wider category of fungi. Fungi are a group of living things that are neither animals nor plants. Scientists generally accept there are six kingdoms of life, with animals being one and plants being another. The fungi kingdom includes mushrooms, moulds and mildews, while the other three kingdoms cover microscopic living things of different sorts, including bacteria.

There are around 144,000 known species of fungi around the world, and because there are so many different types, it makes it a bit difficult to identify them just by sight alone. There are water fungi, land fungi, underground fungi, and fungi that live inside other plants and animals. Some look like traditional toadstools, with a capped top and a stem. Others look like human fingers, sheep's wool, octopuses, or horses’ hooves.