The largest living organism on our planet is neither animal nor plant. It lives in or, more accurately, under a forest in Oregon, spread over nine square kilometres. It glows eerily in the dark, and scientists reckon it’s about 2,500 years old.
This is not the elevator pitch for a Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster, though I admit the thought has crossed my mind many times over the past year. No, it’s just one of the less bizarre facts that sprung up as my friend and producer Richard Ward researched a documentary for BBC Radio 4 on the strange world of fungi.
Fungi are hot in the science community right now. A vast new frontier that makes the space race look like a school project. Even at the edges of the story, fungi make us question our notions of self, species, sex and community. It’s not the hallucinogenic qualities of mushrooms that open the doors of perception, it’s pretty much everything about them.