Fungus Among Us
Passing through a forest it’s easy to focus on the familiar, the exceptional. Is that deafening teacher, teacher call an ovenbird hiding in a brambly thicket? Did a red eft just slither between a tangle of twigs and a mud puddle? There’s dazzling diversity to the flora and fauna we can see and hear in the Adirondacks. But so much of our landscape—or any ecosystem—is invisible, high in the canopy or beneath the surface. There are individuals, of course, but each is part of a complex community.
Susan Hopkins, a retired postal clerk with four decades of deep involvement in fungi of all kinds, explains, “What we’re seeing here does not work as a single organism, it’s about the common good. A forest is all about interdependency. Birds depend on the trees that support the insects they eat; efts live in the soil, aerating it to
