Until I was in my mid-30s, I despised mushrooms. This was around the time I met my wife, so she likes to take credit for the transformation, but my recollection is that it was a gradual transition from associating mushrooms with sliminess to a more favorable association to the nutty flavor and earthy scent of truffles. Perhaps it is an instinctual thing that protects children from eating poisonous toadstools that wore off. Indeed, two of my children seem to have found my lost disgust.
Even though I'd gained a culinary appreciation for the fungal kingdom, in the intervening decade or more that CELSS technology has been my active interest, my focus has been on the symbiosis of the plant and animal kingdoms. Until recently. A month ago I started a mushroom grow kit I received as a gift, and expanded my practical experience beyond aquaponic gardening and small animal husbandry. I have also some white truffle spores I intend to sow next.
A couple weeks ago as my mushrooms began to emerge, I was looking for something educational to watch while exercising and ran across The Kingdom: How Fungi Made Our World which got me thinking not just about the practicality, but the necessity of fungus, especially in the ab initio creation of a stable ecosystem.
These thoughts on the biochemical mastery of the fungus kingdom have been "fermenting" in the back of my head these past weeks. Then today I ran across a couple of news items that have prompted the writing of this post:
One Billion Year Old Fungi Found is Earth's Oldest
NASA Soon to Launch Biosentinels
It now seems clear to me that primitive mycorrhyzal fungi and lichen may need to be seeded even before plants in a habitat, as they can best break down raw minerals into the constituents of life.