Image of the Week: Maitake Mother
© D. Yael Bernhard
Autumn is upon us, and this is the time of year when Maitake mushrooms (Grifola frondosa) fruit from the base of mature oaks. Both culinary and medicinal, this frilly fungus is truly a gift of the forest. Here I've imagined a Maitake as a source of nourishment for a young woman who draws sustenance through its mycelium. She, in turn, will spin new life from her own flesh. The mushroom nurtures the future mother, their flesh tones rendered in the same earthy palette.
When I first learned about mycelium, I thought of it as the roots of mushrooms. Plants have roots, I thought, and mushrooms also grow out of the earth, so they must have roots, too.
Later I learned that mycelium is actually what enables trees to draw nutrients from soil, by breaking down minerals and translocating them into the roots. Mycelium creates a cellular bridge that keeps plants alive. In return, the plants share the sugars they produce with the fungi, which cannot photosynthesize. This mycorrhizal, symbiotic relationship occurs in 95% of plants and trees worldwide, and is what enables them to live on land. Mycelium also creates soil itself, by breaking down rocks into tiny particles, and binding them together with its fine mesh of filaments that may be thinner than a human hair.
Years later, life led me to work for Catskill Fungi, a medicinal mushroom company, where I now make extracts of six different mushrooms, help with foraging, and lead mushroom walks. Though not a dedicated mycologist, I've been around them enough to view the world through a mycocentric lens. I've come to see mycelium as a metaphor of nature itself, mirrored again and again in natural forms. Like a river delta, mycelium branches out according to the lay of the land over vast expanses. Like a neural network, it sends signals through its hyphal tips to other hyphae. Like the vascular system of a placenta, mycelium draws nourishment from the substrate around it and delivers it into the living, growing mass of its own fruiting body – like a fungal fetus that spins its very flesh from the raw materials delivered through the umbilical cord of the mushroom’s stipe, or stem. Mycelium surrounds the finest rootlets of the biggest trees, and grows up inside the woody flesh of its photosynthesizing partners. Like branching ice crystals on glass or the veins of a purple iris, mycelium forms beautiful labyrinthine patterns. Like a colony of coral, it interweaves with its neighbors and constantly responds to its environment. Like finely crocheted lace, it anastomoses, connecting back to itself in addition to branching outward, building connection in every direction. Like a communication network, mycelium is nearly infinite in its reach, an underground relay station that enables trees to communicate with each other through electrolytes and electromagnetic impulses. Scientists are only just beginning to understand the fungal intelligence of mycelium, and the fundamental role it plays in supporting life on earth. At the same time, like the creeping textures of mold and rotting decay, mycelium is also a decomposer, breaking down life to feed life yet to come. (Find more facts about mycelium here.)
Somehow I managed to dwell on earth for more than half a century before I even knew of mycelium's existence. Now it’s growing into my art as I become more and more aware of the silent mesh that undergirds life in the rhizosphere, and with it, our entire ecosystem. Mycelium is alive, pressure and chemical sensitive, responsive to stimuli and ever seeking to explore, connect, transmit, and receive. Like art and science, it becomes more intricate as it grows, branching out into finer and more specialized forms of expression with time. As creative processes in both nature and human nature progress from coarse to fine, mycelium embodies this progression, creating connection not only within the environment but also in the imagination.
Though mycelium doesn’t actually grow into our flesh and bones, we breathe fungal spores from birth to death, and colonize fungal microbes in our microbiomes throughout our lives. The more I learn about mushrooms, the more I reimagine the web of life as a mycelial network. I think of those fine white threads as my friends, both familiar and unfathomable. Like the gossamer veil of stars in the Milky Way that is home to our planet, the hidden tapestry underfoot is a vast and silent mystery.
I hope I'll find a Maitake mushroom this autumn!
A good week to all –
D Yael Bernhard
http://dyaelbernhard.com
children's books • fine art • illustration