Ruud Kleinpaste: A fungal lesson in sustainable design
Saturday Morning with Jack Tame · Newstalk ZB
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Show Notes
Many gardeners and observant nature nerds report seeing weird, white, slimy structures lying on the forest floor and on top of the mulch in gardens
Basket fungi are large spherical football-like structures that carry the spores of the fungus: it’s the brown smudgy stuff on the white, rubbery polygons.
Those spores smell quite putrid and attract all kinds of flies that lap up the moisture – it’s probably full of proteins; nutrients!
The spores stick to their feet and as they land in the forest, garden mulch, or on some organic debris, the fungal spores are distributed – repeating the cycle.
When you see a very juvenile version (they look like creamy-white eggs, sticking half out of the ground) just grab one and cut it open
It’s remarkable how the basket fungus is totally compressed, folded up and ready to hatch inside that “egg”:
Main points of the story… What can we learn from this fungus?
- a) they recycle stuff – there is no waste in nature
- b) They spread the spores throughout the forest by employing invertebrates such as flies
- c) Nature cooperates/collaborates… everybody wins in the arrangement (who invented the word “competition”?)… let me guess: Economists?
- d) Nature communicates with natural, chemical clues: the smell of the spores attracts the vectors
- e) Want to know how to economize on transport cost by reducing the size of packages? Have a look at the basket fungus!
- f) There are no straight lines in Nature’s Design
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