"Nowadays if Leichhardt's Beech is planted at all it is likely to be as a street tree. Its neat round headed habit, its straight smooth trunk and tidy bole, together with its moderate rate of growth, are positive advantages when it comes to being planted in pavements, close to walls and buildings.

When I see the White Beeches along the boulevards of the Gold Coast, marooned between roaring carriageways, buffeted by fume-laden draughts, far from their in-dwelling invertebrates, their phalangers and parrots, their festoons of vines and garlands of epiphytes, I pray for them to disqualify themselves for such ignominy by dying soon, but instead, dwarfed, filthy and ragged, they suffer on."

Mushrooms are the Future of Our Diet and of our World

12 March 2024 / No Comments

Mushrooms are the Future. I grew up on a farm that had fields full of Field Mushrooms and Puffballs every autumn. We also had Shaggy Inkcaps and a large number of others fungi too. The Inkcaps grew in a straight line across a large field next to an ancient bridleway. I always wondered why. Now I know – there used to be a hedge there, an ancient hedge.

I have never worked on another farm since with a huge variety of fungi out there. They were always near the edge of the wood or a hedge. Sometimes they would appear where a hedge used to be! Key to this is that we used very little artificial fertiliser and no herbicides.

Mushrooms are the future of our world. When we destroy ancient forest, we destroy a vast network of underground piping and plumbing that helps capture carbon and sustain our world.