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The focus on mushrooms is new, but the amazing collection of Kew mushroom samples dates back to the time of Charles Darwin's evolutionary theorist and the late nineteenth century. children's author Beatrix Potter.
She, too, was a devoted mushroom fan who battled Kew's best mycologist – as mushroom specialists. In a brief break with the British decorum of the time, she even suggested that he had himself become a mushroom.
Kew is known to take a comprehensive approach to field research, but it is impossible in this case. There are up to 3.8 million mushroom species, but only about 144,000 have been identified. New discoveries are made all the time, but no one expects every species to be cataloged anytime soon.
Nevertheless, Kew's fungarium, hidden out of public view, is home to about 1.25 million specimens, making it the largest collection of mushrooms in the world, said the chief mycologist, Ester Gaya. Some date back to the 18th century.
It also houses – under key – a rare collection of mushrooms known colloquially as "magic mushrooms" for their psychedelic properties. Kew scientists say that more and more types of psychotropic fungi are being discovered in many parts of the world.
Mushrooms are praised for their medical uses, they have proven essential for antibiotics and cholesterol-lowering statins, but even mushroom fans admit that there is a macabre element in some aspects of mushroom life. There is the fungus, for example, that invades the cicada's nymphs and settles inside the cicada's body, killing them slowly.
Then there are the fungi that live in the ants, controlling their movements before killing them. Fungi can infect an entire colony of ants with their spores, said Gaya.
"They turn them into zombie ants," she said.
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