The Fantastic World of Indian Fungi
Photo: Pia Krishen
Despite some negative stereotypes, there are the wonderful ways in which nearly 14,400 species of fungi, specific to India, live, breathe and slay. Babli Yadav explores this fantastic, beautiful world with young naturalists from around the country.
At first, these species of fungi or mushrooms that I came across my walks through the woods seemed a bit eerie… vibrant… gooey… colourful… tiny… large. I was confused: Should I touch or not? What if the noxiousness and poison that I had been warned of enters my body… through the tip of my finger… in the tiniest fraction of second that it comes in touch with the poor being?
Guess what: I made it through alive, and the experience left me completely intrigued.
What was this contradicting, mysterious yet magnificent thing that lives off the dead? The only other living champions like these I had come across—which feast off the dying to turn it into organic matter—were maggots; maggots that eventually transform into black soldier flies and soar away. But the maggots were creatures on the move, crawling from one rotting feast to the next. Fungi stay still in their place, beautiful from certain angles, ominous from others.
But then, not all fungi kill, just the way that not all mushrooms are poison. Yes, mushrooms too, are fungi, just like yeast and mould. Hence, while some fungi have the ability to break down trees into rich nutrient soil, others transform into food on our table, a few species have been scientific revelation turning into medicines curing humans; and then some can even destroy life as we know it.
Unfortunately, in the Indian context, fungi have the reputation of being life-swallowing, rather than life giving. There are few in number who are discovering the fantastic and the futuristic in the fungi.
Photo: Gautam Pandey
In a recent article for The Guardian, Giuliana Furci—a female mycologist from Chile who featured in the Netflix documentary Fantastic Fungi—acknowledged the organism for its presence in most of the food that hits our table (read beer, wine, chocolate, soy sauce, bread, cheese). In her words, the earth’s secret miracle worker is not a plant or an animal, it’s fungi. They are also crucial to protecting our climate. Back home in India, however, I couldn’t find a single read-worthy piece that thanked fungi for fermenting our desi idli, dosa, dhokla batter.
The first visual often associated with the term ‘fungi’ is either fungus or something rotten, harmful. For the ‘better exposed’, it’s fancy shrooms, ingested for a satiated palate, or a high. Google ‘Fungi India’ and hit the news tab if you don’t believe me!
But in between our knowing or ignorance, are the wonderful ways in which nearly 14,400 species of fungi, specific to India alone, live, breathe and slay. An official website by Botanical Survey of India—which confirms the figure above—states that globally, almost 96,000 species of fungi have already been described and estimated in the order of 1.5 million species including nonfungal analogues, making fungi the second most diverse major group of organisms on Earth.
So, what does fungi—one of the five biological kingdom classifications in the living world—really do to our planet’s ecosystem? In simple words, it decomposes, decays, breaks down, crumbles all living matter on the verge of death, sickness or spoilage, only to allow life to rebuild in another form. To put it even plainer, the growth of fungi indicates an undisturbed ecosystem.
In simple words, it decomposes, decays, breaks down, crumbles all living matter on the verge of death, sickness or spoilage, only to allow life to rebuild in another form. The growth of fungi indicates an undisturbed ecosystem.
Death is hardly a favourite subject in India—compared to life!—and thus, coming to terms with fungi as a positive than a negative is a thing of the future. But attitudes are altering—and perhaps, for some good.
A budding bunch of fungi enthusiasts and naturalists in India have taken it upon themselves to dwell deeper into the world of fungi and drop the ‘F’ word on social mediums as and when they deem fit to spread the spores in the virtual kingdom. In August, wildlife filmmaker Gautam Pandey, during a night stroll in Bhagwan Mahaveer sanctuary located in the Western Ghats, found and captured a bioluminescent or glowing fungi. In his post, he described it as a ‘colony’ of different fungi that slowly mature over each monsoon till they reach the perfect chemical balance, produce certain enzymes, and are able to emit light. This was just one amongst the many fungi species that he has captured and shared.
Pandey, and his father Mike Pandey, have shot a set of episodes for Doordarshan’s renewed version of popular series Earth Matters. He credited his fungi findings to his ability to seek little details amidst nature out of sheer curiosity.
“I grew up in Delhi and moved to Goa just three years ago,” said Pandey. “Being born in a family of filmmakers, I grew up noticing details. We were often told of toxic mushrooms which actually weren’t and would be often found near tree trunks or the edible button mushrooms. Yet, there was always a mystery around mushrooms which intrigued me further.” As a kid, Pandey remembers visiting parks and spotting fungi around compost pits, but it was only two years back that he found himself on an adventurous journey of capturing fungi on his lens—especially the kind that glowed.
“Earth Matters is one of India’s oldest environmental series aimed at generating awareness about nature,” Pandey adds. “In India, usually the focus is on megafauna. We have shot one entire episode on macro and micro life and fungi is a part of that, for it is seldom out there in light.”
Talking about if people in India are ready to dig deeper into fungi-related stories, he shares, “I think people are tired of tiger and black panther photos. The kind of audience I wish to relate with is ready for something more in-depth.”
Sneha Koppula, who did her Masters in food science and nutrition at the University of Wisconsin, has now found herself smitten by the fungi world. Daughter of Narsanna Koppula—one of the pioneers of Permaculture movement in India—the younger Koppula now spends most of her time researching fungi on their farm Aranya, in a village near Zaheerabad district of Telangana. She has so far spotted more than a hundred species of fungi on Aranya’s soil and is proud to be known as the ‘fungi girl’ in the virtual world.
When she is not assisting her father in teaching permaculture enthusiasts, Koppula can be found roaming around the farm land with a knife and a ruler scouting for intriguing looking mushy subjects. “Even though I grew up noticing fungi and mushrooms popping up on fruiting bodies, it was not my special interest,” says Koppula. “Three years ago, while walking in the woods in the U.S., I came across some really interesting fungi species that caught my eye. They were in different shapes, sizes, colours but so vibrant, one just couldn’t ignore them. Since then, I feel my eyes are calibrated to spot fungi. I feel this connection with them. I found myself looking for them everywhere I went.”
However, she was rather disappointed when she figured that she may have to give up on her fungi research on the American soil and move back home. “I knew I would spot fungi back home too but probably not as many species as I found in the temperate climate there, especially during summers. I was going back to a tropical land with little moisture and I figured I was going to miss fungi.”
Sneha Koppula
The past two years, however, were rather ‘fungi’-ful for her, especially with the unexpected and prolonged rains during the pandemic. Koppula’s Instagram account, blooming with fungi images has a sizeable followership of fungi admirers, and she is often dealing with direct messages urging her to provide identification and features of a particular specie. Her research on fungi has made her split open fungi with a gentle knife or ruler, check for discolouration, smell, taste, collect spores on paper for identification purpose. “When I was in the US, there were many books with pictorial representation which helped in identifying and classifying,” says Koppula. “But what I have found is that there aren’t many resources or pictorial records pertaining to fungi commonly spotted in India. If you really want today’s generation to learn more about this part of the living world, a handbook or a picture book with details is crucial.”
Nowadays, Koppula is deep in the process of researching and recording fungi in India. She confesses that that someday she may also come out with her own handbook for the growing community of mycophiles in this part of the world.
While fungi walks are a charm for those living off the grid, working on farms or spending time in the woods, city dwellers confined to groomed lawns and heavily-interfered green spaces are at a disadvantage here. But Pia Krishen, an English teacher by profession and a naturalist by heart (genes too, probably) has been able to find her fungi heaven in the capital city of Delhi.
Daughter of environmentalist, author and independent filmmaker Pradip Krishen, Pia Krishen confesses that although her first love are insects, she found herself drawn to fungi, a few years ago.
“I live in Chanakyapuri in Delhi which is very close to a small patch of forest known as the Central Delhi Ridge,” says Krishen. “It's a beautiful patch of nature and I have been walking my dogs there for years now. Last few years, I began to notice that in the monsoon, the ridge becomes a kind of haven for fungi. This is the same patch of green where horses used by the presidential bodyguards walk. I have seen the most incredible array of mushrooms growing here.”
Koppula has a sizeable followership of fungi admirers, and she is often dealing with direct messages urging her to provide identification and features of a particular specie. Her research on fungi has made her split open fungi with a gentle knife or ruler, check for discolouration, smell, taste, collect spores on paper for identification purpose.
Earlier in September, Krishen shared an intriguing grey image, egg-shaped mushrooms growing on a moist substrate of horse dung and hay. She also shared many fungi captures from Goa and Auroville when travelling.
Talking about common city aversion towards any sort of ‘suspicious’ growth, Krishen mentions coming across houses, hotels and gated societies with lawns where gardeners are taught how to pluck and throw out mushrooms. She feels that often people are taught to be afraid of what they don’t fully understand. Not all mushrooms may be edible; some can be toxic if ingested, but some of them are just doing their job as decomposers.
We now live in an over-sanitised world now, where most food and the soil that it comes from is laden with chemicals and pesticides. However, there are untouched patches still beaming with organic life and systems.
As Krishen puts it, “We cannot really contribute much to the thriving of fungi life, it’s pretty much sustainable and self-reliant. But a lot of people are trying to destroy their current natural environment.”
She adds that there is now a subsection of interested people who are seeing how beautiful fungi are and they want to know it better. “You won’t believe, I have actually had people write to me saying ‘Would you take us on a fungi-walk?’ and I have told them that I am no expert.” says Krishen. “I cannot help identify all species—but I can show them.”
Often, those that profess love for nature or wildlife are only interested when the natural world is well-behaved. There is so much to nature than just potted plants in a balcony, a neatly-trimmed patch of green, or the pets at home. And it’s up to nature enthusiasts to take these lesser, smaller beings to the masses, and reintroduce in a cheerful and healthy way.
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Babli Yadav is a freelance writer of Hindi poetry, non-fiction essays, and news articles on human interest angles. She is based in Bengaluru, India. You can find her on Instagram: @scribbler_bee.
