Fungi used to be considered plants. Bad plants. Carl Linnaeus even referred to them as “the poorest peasants” of the vegetable class. This reputation stuck, and fungi were considered a nuisance in the Western world well into the 20th century.

Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian is trying to rewrite that narrative. Her new book, Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature catalogs fungi that sprout from the shells of beetles, morph with their sexual partners into one being and exhibit as many as 23,000 mating types. 

Patty believes that fungi’s ability to defy our cut and dry assumptions about the natural world is actually their superpower. All it takes is to first accept that they’re queer as heck. 

Featuring Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian. 

Produced by Marina Henke. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org.

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LINKS

You can find Patty’s new book Forest Euphoria at your local bookstore or online. 

Local to Albany? Visit the fungi exhibit that Marina toured at the New York State Museum: Outcasts: Mary Banning’s World of Mushrooms.

Patty has had the chance to name several new species of fungi. In 2021 she published an article documenting those species, with some pretty great photos of laboulbeniales (those are the fungi that grow from arthropod shells). 

Check out C. L. Porter’s 1969 address to the Indiana Academy of Sciences where he critiques fellow mycologists for being “meek.” It’s brutal.

One of Patty’s favorite films is Microcosmos, a 1996 French documentary that investigates the daily interactions of insects. It’s not direct mushroom content per se, but it is beautiful.

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