Fungi are like nothing else that exists in nature. They appear at first glance to be plants, yet they possess shapes, textures and colors that are peculiar to themselves. They do not feed like other plants, they possess no chlorophyll, they appear to generate no seeds, they emerge when the rest of the green world is dying and, as Pliny once put it succinctly: how is it that anything can spring up and live without a root.
When one considers that they live in dank and gloomy wet lands, already the province of much that is sacred and esoteric that they offer luminosity, hallucinogens and poisons and accompany these sinister attributes with generating fairy rings and growing up with phallic and other weird appearances such as ears, blackened fingers, testicles and brains it is not surprising that the fungi provide a field in which the human imagination can happily run riot.
When one considers that they live in dank and gloomy wet lands, already the province of much that is sacred and esoteric that they offer luminosity, hallucinogens and poisons and accompany these sinister attributes with generating fairy rings and growing up with phallic and other weird appearances such as ears, blackened fingers, testicles and brains it is not surprising that the fungi provide a field in which the human imagination can happily run riot.