Virtual Book Club - Meetings with Remarkable Mushrooms: Forays with Fungi across Hemispheres

Alison Pouliot's Meetings with Remarkable Mushrooms: Forays with Fungi Across Hemispheres takes the reader along on research and foraging expeditions ranging from Iceland to the Pacific Northwest Cascades, from Cornwall to the Jura Mountains on the French-Swiss border, from New Zealand to many points in Australia. En route, we learn the lore and habits of many species of fungi, including the mysteries of bioluminescence, the survival tactics of fungi in extreme conditions of hot and cold, the toxicology of some fungi and their value to ecology, the many critters that live on and in fungi and the functions of mycorrhizal networks.

What sets the book apart, though, is not only its focus on the urgent need for fungal conservation, but the role of human interactions, stories and the local knowledge of Indigenous groups toward that endeavor. Pouliot makes a case for women across cultures being the keepers of such local knowledge and she offers heartening examples of individuals working in ways large and small to restore a damaged planet with the help of our fungal fellow travelers.

Meetings with Remarkable Mushrooms: Forays with Fungi across Hemispheres

by Alison Pouliot

NAMA Book Club topic for Virtual Book Club, March 28, 2024

Host: Gyorgyi Voros

8 PM Eastern | 7PM Central | 6 PM Mountain | 5 PM Pacific