What’s up and what’s new with the forest fungi? What’s the state of the wood-wide web? Are fungi running the forest? 

 On Wednesday, February 28, at  7PM, join Chocorua Lake Conservancy and Cook Memorial Library for Fungi & Trees with mycophile Susan Goldhor, live via Zoom. Fungi and trees have had a long and complicated set of relationships, spanning the spectrum from benign to pathological, since trees evolved, which was more or less around the Carboniferous Era. Could a tree exist without fungi? Maybe, but it would be like an animal without a microbiome, only able to exist in a germ-free environment and fed a supplemented diet.

Almost all fungi are microscopic (mushrooms and the mold that forms on our leftovers are the rare examples of macrofungi) so our ability to easily identify invisible species by their DNA, and modern techniques of visualization, have opened our eyes to more of what’s happening in the forest. We’ve learned a lot and this talk will ignore the mushrooms and lichens to bring you up to date on some of the invisible fungi that are running our ecosystem. Or at least helping to run it. And some of the ways that they’re not. Please register for this Zoom program in advance below.

About the Presenter:

Susan Goldhor is a biologist who got interested in fungi (and plants) after she retired from working with animals. The Boston Mycological Club provided her introduction to fungi; in return she served as president for twelve years. Her mycological essays have been widely published  and she’s a contributing editor at Fungi magazine. Her major interest has always been fungi in our forest ecosystem.

Banner image: Fungi and a tree! Photo: Juno Lamb