Fungi have a long history on our planet. We still don’t really understand them as well as we want to or should. They’ve even made their way into science fiction.

Quite a few people didn’t know that the Paul Stamets on Star Trek Discovery was named after the actual Paul Stamets, a mycologist and entrepeneur.

For the record, the mushrooms in this post are AI generated and so don’t believe that they are edible. I’m no mushroom expert.

Watching the BBC’s Earth 2023 today, in Episode 4, Chris Packham talked about the now extinct giant prototaxites that existed 360m-470m years ago. Up to 1 meter (3.25 ft) in diameter, and up to 8 meters (29 feet) tall, they dwarfed plant life for a time until plants took off and relegated the fungi to shadows. They were the tallest fungi ever, as far as we know.

Digging into it, I thought, “What if fungi could eat plastics?”. It ends up that some types of fungi can eat plastics, and the results are also edible.

I’d have thought that would have popped up in one of my feeds. What an amazing planet we live on.

I’d love to get some plastic eating fungi.