Sonoma County CA black-perigord-truffle
I saw this last week and it reminded me that Steve has posted about mushrooms a fair bit.
This was a much more interesting piece than the CA one. A great piece, in fact. Good writing, a fungal related quest, a mystery, failure, and underdog success. It hits a lot of buttons.
This all ties into E. O. Wilson dying this month. He was a trail blazer some have compared to Darwin. I don’t know about that but he had a lot of influence and was highly regarded. I remember him saying somewhere that if he had it to do over again he would have gone into soil ecology. Everything I have seen suggests he was right about that. Soil is the most complex place in the universe except for, MAYBE, the inside of our heads.
I know next to nothing about fungi but since starting a tree planting campaign I have been forced to look into it. Most plants, and trees especially, are tied together in a 500 million year old coevolution that defies our understanding. This summary gives an idea about that. The PDF can be downloaded.
Update*
http://paulstamets.com/news/evidence-for-mycelial-intelligence
Thank you for getting Ed Wilson in before I could. He was one of the few great men I have ever known.
Plenty of truffles in East Tennessee.