The mushroom is not the organism
A mushroom is a spore-bearing fruiting body. Most of the fungus is a mycelium you never see, and many fungi never make a mushroom at all.
Essay dossiers
The full shelf — science, foraging, cultivation, news, and culture. Newest first. Prefer the atlas if you arrived with a concept, not a date.
21 essays
Spores are not seeds
A spore is a reproductive cell, not a miniature mushroom with a packed lunch. Why the plant analogy misleads field guides, kits, and headlines.
How to read a fungal discovery headline
A new species name, a chemical in a dish, and a press release are different kinds of news. How to read the gaps a fungal headline usually skips.
How to read a paper abstract
An abstract is a compressed claim, not the evidence. How to scan methods, hedging words, and study type before the press release does it for you.
What “mycorrhizal” means without the myth
Mycorrhizae are root–fungus partnerships that trade carbon for nutrients. They are widespread, measurable, and still not a chatting forest.
Citizen science and iNaturalist caveats
Community observations are powerful records of place and time. A research-grade badge is still not the same as a monographer’s yes.
Climate and fruiting phenology
Fungi fruit on schedules shaped by weather, season, and place. Climate change research asks how those schedules shift — carefully, without invented percentages.
What a mushroom kit is doing
A culinary grow kit is usually a block already run through with mycelium. Fruiting is a change in air and humidity, not photosynthesis.
Contamination as ecology
Green mold on a block is not a moral failure. It is other organisms winning the same substrate race your crop was running.
What spawn is
Spawn is living mycelium on a carrier — often grain — used to inoculate a larger substrate. It is not a seed, and it is the quiet middle chapter of cultivation.
Decomposers, pathogens, mutualists
Saprotrophs, parasites, and mycorrhizal partners are useful categories — until a fungus switches roles. How to hold the map without pretending it is a fence.
Oyster and shiitake are different jobs
Pleurotus and Lentinula both fruit on domesticated blocks, but they ask different things of air, water, and patience. A kit sheet is not interchangeable.
What the wood wide web actually supports
Roots and fungi do form partnerships, and some fungi link more than one plant. The chatting forest is where the metaphor outruns the evidence.
Mushroom and toadstool
One language pair splits edible from suspect; another treats them as synonyms. How English got tangled — and why biology does not owe folklore a border.
How taxonomists name fungi — and why names change
A fungal name is a hypothesis tied to a type specimen. DNA reshuffled many familiar labels. How to read a name without treating it as betrayal.
Fungi in food history
Yeast, mold-ripened cheese, fermented drinks, and culinary mushrooms shaped cuisines long before anyone said “mycology.” A general history without invented firsts.
Folk tests will not keep you safe
A silver coin, an onion, or a bright cap will not tell you if a wild mushroom is edible. This journal will not certify a meal.
Foraging ethics and permissions
Before identification comes permission. Land access, harvest restraint, and why “the mycelium you cannot see” is an ethical fact, not a slogan.
Identification apps are helpers, not oracles
A phone model can suggest look-alikes from a photograph. It cannot dig the base, smell the flesh, or take responsibility for a meal.
Reading season and habitat
When and where a mushroom fruits narrows the field of candidates. It is field literacy — not a substitute for identification, and never a recipe.
Why this journal stays clear of psychedelic discourse
An editorial boundary, not a moral panic. Mycopsyco covers general mycology; clinical, ceremonial, and recreational psychoactive topics are out of scope here.
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