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Certain fungi poison not only to the animals but the trees that surround them, while others have valuable medicinal properties and can flag important changes to the ecosystem

14 September 2024

9:00 AM

14 September 2024

9:00 AM

Close Encounters of the Fungal Kind: In Pursuit of Remarkable Mushrooms Richard Fortey

William Collins, pp.336, 25

Weird, stinky and occasionally deadly: not everyone can make heart room for mushrooms. But Richard Fortey, a palaeontologist who recently retired from his post at the Natural History Museum after more than three decades’ service, has always found ‘pleasure and perplexity’ in the ‘alien’ world of fungi.

In his lovably nerdish 2021 memoir A Curious Boy, Fortey credited the Observer’s Guide to Common Fungi with setting him on the path to a passionate life scientific.

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