History — Sporelab

A brief history of mycology

~400 BC

Ancient knowledge

Theophrastus, the Greek "father of botany", wrote about fungi in his Historia Plantarum — classifying them as plants without roots, leaves, or seeds. He was wrong about the classification but right that they were extraordinary. Truffles were prized in ancient Rome; Pliny the Elder described their harvesting in detail and called them "the greatest of all miracles of nature."

1729

Micheli names the spores

Pier Antonio Micheli, an Italian botanist, published Nova Plantarum Genera — the first systematic attempt to classify fungi. More importantly, he demonstrated that spores could germinate into new fungi, disproving the prevailing theory of spontaneous generation for this group. He described over 900 species and is considered the founder of mycology.

1753

Linnaeus and the plant kingdom mistake

Carl Linnaeus published Species Plantarum and placed fungi in the plant kingdom — a classification error that would persist for over 200 years. To be fair to Linnaeus, he didn't think much of fungi at all, describing them as "the poor peasants of the plant kingdom." He listed only around 80 species, and the description was perfunctory.

1821–1832

Fries and the foundation of modern classification

Elias Magnus Fries published Systema Mycologicum — a three-volume classification of fungi that became the foundation for all subsequent work. He described thousands of species and established a systematic approach that, despite being pre-molecular, was remarkably accurate. His species descriptions are still considered valid under the International Code of Nomenclature.

1865

Beatrix Potter and the lichen controversy

Yes — that Beatrix Potter. Before Peter Rabbit, she was a serious amateur mycologist who produced extraordinarily detailed illustrations of fungi and lichen. She proposed, independently and correctly, that lichen are symbiotic organisms — a fungus and an alga living together. The scientific establishment, personified by the Director of Kew Gardens, refused to take her seriously because she was a woman. She was right. They were wrong. She went on to write children's books instead.

1928

Fleming and penicillin

Alexander Fleming returned from holiday to find a Penicillium mould had contaminated one of his bacterial cultures — and that a clear zone around the mould was free of bacteria. He published his findings in 1929. The discovery went largely ignored for a decade until Howard Florey and Ernst Chain developed it into a usable drug in the 1940s. It has since saved an estimated 200 million lives.

1957

Wasson and the "mushroom ceremony"

R. Gordon Wasson, a banker and amateur ethnomycologist, published an account in Life magazine of participating in a Mazatec mushroom ceremony in Oaxaca with María Sabina — the first time psilocybin mushrooms were introduced to the Western mainstream. The article was read by Albert Hofmann (who had synthesised LSD), who went on to isolate psilocybin in 1958. It was the beginning of a very strange few decades.

1969

Whittaker's five kingdoms

Robert Whittaker proposed a five-kingdom system that finally gave fungi their own kingdom — separate from plants, animals, protists, and bacteria. It took until the 1970s and 80s for this to be widely adopted, but it was the formal recognition that fungi are genuinely their own thing.

1990s

Molecular revolution

The development of PCR (polymerase chain reaction) and DNA sequencing transformed mycology. For the first time, species could be compared at the genetic level rather than just by appearance. The results were humbling — vast numbers of species described as distinct turned out to be the same, and enormous numbers of apparently identical species turned out to be different. The estimated number of fungal species went from around 70,000 to current estimates of 2–6 million. Whole families were reorganised. The fungal tree of life was almost entirely redrawn.

2000s–now

The popular turn

A combination of Paul Stamets' TED talk (2008), the publication of Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake (2020), Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind (2018), and several high-profile clinical trials of psilocybin at Johns Hopkins and NYU brought fungi to mainstream attention in a way that had never happened before. The explosion of interest in cultivation, foraging, and medicinal mushrooms that followed is still ongoing.

The people who matter

1921 – 1986

R. Gordon Wasson

Ethnomycologist · JP Morgan VP

A banker who became obsessed with the cultural history of mushrooms after his Russian wife introduced him to them on their honeymoon. His 1957 Life magazine article brought psilocybin mushrooms to the Western world and sparked decades of research and cultural upheaval. His book Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality argued that the Vedic ritual drink soma was Amanita muscaria — a theory still debated today.

1779 – 1848

Elias Magnus Fries

Father of modern mycology

The Swedish botanist who did for fungi what Linnaeus did for plants. His three-volume Systema Mycologicum (1821–32) described thousands of species and established a classification framework that governed the field for 150 years. His descriptions remain valid in international nomenclature, meaning that mushroom species today are still named with reference to Fries. He described so many species that mycologists still use the abbreviation "Fr." after Latin names.

b. 1955

Paul Stamets

Mycologist · Author · Entrepreneur

The most famous living mycologist, for better or worse. Author of Mycelium Running, Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms, and Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World — the last of which has probably led more people to start growing mushrooms than anything else ever written. His TED talk "6 Ways Mushrooms Can Save the World" has over 7 million views. Founder of Fungi Perfecti. Polarising in academic circles for his enthusiasm outpacing his evidence, but undeniably responsible for the current cultural interest in mycology.

1866 – 1943

Beatrix Potter

Mycologist · Illustrator · Reluctant author

Before Peter Rabbit, Potter was producing some of the finest scientific illustrations of fungi ever made, conducting germination experiments, and independently arriving at the correct theory of lichen symbiosis. The scientific establishment dismissed her because she was a woman. She eventually gave up trying to publish and redirected her energies to children's books and sheep farming. In 1997, the Linnean Society formally apologised for refusing to hear her paper in 1897.

b. 1987

Merlin Sheldrake

Biologist · Author

Author of Entangled Life (2020), the most widely read popular science book about fungi ever written. His writing is genuinely unusual — rigorous but willing to sit with uncertainty, scientifically precise but unafraid of the philosophical implications of mycorrhizal networks and what "intelligence" might mean at the scale of mycelium. The book has probably done more to shift public understanding of fungi than anything since Stamets' TED talk.

1939 – 1992

Terence McKenna

Ethnobotanist · Psychonaut · Provocateur

Genuinely difficult to classify. A brilliant, charismatic thinker whose ideas about psilocybin, consciousness, and human evolution ("Stoned Ape Theory") are largely unsupported by evidence but have had an extraordinary cultural influence. His books Food of the Gods and True Hallucinations are bizarre, entertaining, and occasionally illuminating. His brother Dennis McKenna is a serious researcher whose work on psilocybin pharmacology is well-regarded.

1831 – 1897

Anton de Bary

Father of plant pathology

The German botanist who coined the term "symbiosis" and who first demonstrated that plant diseases were caused by fungi rather than arising spontaneously within the plant. His work on Phytophthora infestans — the water mould (not technically a fungus) responsible for the Irish potato famine — established the science of plant pathology. He also made foundational contributions to understanding the fungal life cycle and sexual reproduction.

b. 1941

Nicholas Money

Mycologist · Author · Sceptic

Professor of mycology at Miami University and the field's most entertaining contrarian. His books Mr. Bloomfield's Orchard and Mushroom are both excellent popular introductions, but he's equally known for his scepticism of grand claims — particularly the "Wood Wide Web" idea of forest communication through mycorrhizal networks, which he argues has been significantly overstated. A useful corrective to the more breathless popular coverage of fungi.

"The real question is not whether fungi are intelligent. It's whether our concept of intelligence is capacious enough to include them."

— Merlin Sheldrake

The wood wide web — what's actually true

The idea that trees communicate and share resources through mycorrhizal fungal networks — the so-called "wood wide web" — is one of the most popular ideas in popular science. It's not wrong, exactly. But it's been significantly simplified in the telling.

What is true: mycorrhizal fungi do form networks connecting multiple trees. Carbon, water, nitrogen, and phosphorus can move through these networks between trees. In experimental conditions, stressed trees have been shown to receive more carbon than they send. Seedlings growing in the shade of established trees sometimes receive carbon via the network.

What is less clear: whether this represents intentional "communication," whether it benefits the forest as a whole or primarily the fungus (which controls the network), and whether the dramatic effects seen in lab conditions occur consistently in natural forests. The fungus is not altruistic — it's farming the trees as much as helping them.

The science is genuinely interesting and ongoing. The popular representation of forests as cooperative communities mediated by fungal internet tends to project a kind of intentionality and solidarity onto what may be primarily a marketplace of competing organisms. Both framings are probably incomplete.